What is the real meaning of this pretty modern expression? Why, in plain language, it is arranging “to win a race.” Listen! What think you? There are very many unfairly run horse-races. Take this statement as gospel from one who knows, but who _cannot_ divulge the secrets of the Turf. Listen again. Betting is simply a speculative business, two parties to a bet. Each tries to win the other’s money, and each party adopts the best expedient to do so. We all know who _does_ win in the long run, and I am penning this rigmarole to show, if possible, to the small sportsman that the odds against him are so tremendous that it is next to _impossible for him to win_—_I mean in the long run_—and I so write in the hope of inducing him to “turn the game up” once and for ever, which I am sure would save much frightful distress, save the wrecking of many a home, prevent much trouble, and would be to the happiness of thousands who now waste their hard-earned money in a wilful way and in impossible successful speculation. I am not writing as a moralist or a sentimentalist, but in a purely business way; using common-sense to prove to misguided, foolish people that to invest their money in backing horses is a stupid, unwise, unbusiness-like mode of investing their cash, and is a way that means absolute loss, if not ruin, simply because the _chances to win are so great against them, and the odds against them so fearful, that success is next to impossible_. To convince a backer that such is the case, I know, is a most difficult task, and really for a bookmaker to do so seems a paradox and a right-down absurdity, but it is not so. If the small backer could be extinguished, the legitimate abused business of betting would be much relieved from the stigma now cast upon it through the misdoings of the small backer, who, in his hopeless task, runs himself into serious difficulties and causes trouble all round. The removal of the small sportsman would be of inestimable benefit, not only to himself (I want him to look at the matter in that light), but to the straight respectable bookmaker.