'Betting-shop' is vulgar, and we dislike vulgarity. 'Commission Office,' 'Racing Bank,' 'Mr Hopposite Green's Office,' 'Betting-Office,'are the styles of announcement adopted by speculators who open what low people call Betting-shops. The chosen designation is usually painted in gold letter on a chocolate-coloured wire-gauze blind, impervious to the view. A betting-office may display on its small show-board two bronzed plaster horses, rampant, held by two Ethiopian figures, nude; or it may prefer making a show of cigars. Many offices have risen out of simple cigar-shops. When this is the case, the tobacco business gives way, the slow trade and fast profession not running well together. An official appearance is always considered necessary. A partition, therefore, sufficiently high not to be peered over, runs midway across the shop, surmounted with a rail. By such means, visions are suggested to the intelligent mind of desks, clerks, and, if the beholder has sufficient imagination, of bankers' clerks. In the partition is an enlarged _pigeon_-hole--not far off, may be supposed to lurk the hawk--through which are received shillings, half-crowns; in fact, any kind of coin or notes, no sum appearing inadmissible. The office is papered with a warm crimson paper, to make it snug and comfortable, pleasant as a lounge, and casting a genial glow upon the proceedings. But the betting-lists are the attraction--these are the dice of the betting-man: a section of one of the side-walls within the office is devoted to them. They consist of long strips of paper--each race having its own slip--on which are stated the odds against the horses. Hasty and anxious are the glances which the speculator casts at the betting-lists: he there sees which are the favourites; whether those he has backed are advancing or retrograding; and he endeavours to discover, by signs and testimonies, by all kinds of movements and dodges, the knowing one's opinion. He will drop fishing words to other gazers, will try to overhear whispered remarks, will sidle towards any jockey-legged or ecurial--costumed individual, and aim more especially at getting into the good graces of the betting-office keeper, who, when his business is slack, comes forth from behind the partition and from the duties of the pigeon-hole, to stretch his legs and hold turf-converse. The betting-office keeper is the speculator's divinity.