It is quite likely that with most gamblers any attempt to convince them that gambling is wrong in itself will fail. Probably more impression is made, especially on beginners, by exposing the folly of the practice. In the case of boys leaving school and entering early manhood, who think it smart and manly to bet, we can show them that, so far from this being the case, betting with bookmakers is the hall-mark of an ignorant greenhorn. We can show them how the bookmaker is a parasite upon society, preying upon the ignorance of the foolish people who bet with him, and often living uncommonly well at their expense, as was the bookmaker arrested in Manchester, whose books showed that he had made £5846 in five months. The extent to which gross ignorance of all that it is important to know in estimating the chances of a horse passes for profound knowledge amongst betting men is astounding. The writer remembers travelling one day from Newcastle with a number of working men who were going to attend the races at Thirsk. They were evidently men who habitually betted and closely followed the betting news in the papers. To any one with the slightest knowledge of horses, their discussion, although accompanied by airs of profound wisdom, was in the highest degree amusing, the climax coming when one man, whose opinion was evidently greatly valued by the rest, gave as his reason for not backing a certain horse, “He wags his tail ower much for me.” For telling ridicule of the gambling folly there is nothing better than Charles Kingsley’s _Letter to Young Men on Betting and Gambling_.[12] It is probably well known, but the writer cannot refrain from quoting one or two passages:— “I hold, then, that betting is itself more or less wrong and immoral. But I hold, too, that betting, in three cases out of four, is altogether foolish; so foolish that I cannot understand why the very young men who are fondest of it should be the very men who are proudest of being considered shrewd, knowing men of the world, and what not. “They stake their money on this horse and on that. Now, judging of a horse’s capabilities is an art, and a very delicate and difficult art, depending first on natural talent, and next on experience, such as not one man in a thousand has. But how many betting young men know anything about a horse, save that he has four legs? How many of them know at sight whether a horse is sound or not? whether he can stay or not? whether he is going in good form or not? whether he is doing his best or not? Probably five out of six of them could not sit on a race-horse without falling off; and then such a youth pretends to himself that he is a judge of the capabilities of a noble brute, who is a much better judge of the young gentleman’s capabilities, and would prove himself so within five minutes after he had got into the saddle.