Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever-so-few? Though I never owned a horse, have I not been the proprietor of six equine females, of which one was the prettiest little "Morgin" that ever stepped? Listen, then, to an opinion Ihave often expressed long before this venture of ours in England.
Horse-RACING is not a republican institution; horse-TROTTING is.
Only very rich persons can keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly as gambling implements.All that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful, very, - OF course, - great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian,"and the rest.I say racing horses are essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables.Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning;but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican.It belongs to two phases of society, - a cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements.Real Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it.This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet.But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings, -to which I plead very susceptible, - the disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it means.Its supporters are the Southern gentry, - fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand the term, - a few Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley.In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth enough; the passion for it spreads downwards through all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger.London is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the next day without wincing.
Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment.The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting men.
What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we have expected that the pick - if it was the pick - of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to.
We may beat yet.As an American, I hope we shall.As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it.Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child, - all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh.The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues.
And by the way, let me beg you not to call a TROTTING MATCH a RACE, and not to speak of a "thoroughbred" as a "BLOODED" horse, unless he has been recently phlebotomized.I consent to your saying "blood horse," if you like.Also, if, next year, we send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four-mile race in 7 18.5, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.
[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph.To brag little, - to show well, - to crow gently, if in luck, - to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.]
- Apropos of horses.Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein; - this is what I mean by jockeying.
- When an author has a number of books out a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation.
- Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming.The extracts are GROUND-BAIT.
