In these clubs may be seen groups of bettors each with an eye on "the tape," which winds out its automatic lists of the running horses, their jockeys, and the odds at which they are being backed in the ring, followed in due course by the name of the winning and placed horses and that important item of information, the "starting price," so much valued by bettors. As race follows race the same routine is repeated, so that a flutter of excitement is kept up till the programme is exhausted. Winners over the first race take heart and go on speculating, while men who have lost make an effort to retrieve their bad fortune by extending their investments, and thus the game continues till the last race of the day has been decided. There are men constantly engaged in betting who in their own circles are not suspected of doing so. Some of them do so by the aid of friends who possess a knowledge of the business, others steal into the bookmakers' offices, and looking about them fearful of being observed, whisper their business to the layer of the odds or his clerk. The lame and halt, the blind and dumb, the rich and the ragged, daily rub shoulders in quest of fortune in the betting arena. Men with well-ventilated boots and guiltless of linen under-garments pass their shillings or half-crowns into the jewelled hand of the bookmaker, who at once rattles off an entry to his clerk: "6 to 1 Gold for the Fortunatus Stakes." A score, perhaps, of such poverty-stricken gamblers could not among them muster clothes of the value of the albert chain and pendant hung from the watch of the bookmaker's penciller. Racing to-day spreads itself over a wide field, and to witness the decision of such races as the Derby or St. Leger Stakes, the Chester Cup, the City and Suburban Handicap, or the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot, tens of thousands will assemble between the classes and the masses, each person seemingly more interested than the other. Some are on the scene from pure love of sport, others from their desire to bet, and when a race is decided, especially one of the great handicaps which give rise to so much betting, tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of pounds will have been lost and won, the sum total being of course made up by a vast number of small and many large transactions.