On they flew like a young whirlwind, though one bay horse they called "Blind Tom" fell short. The rider, trying to bring him up, was pitched over his head, at which the crowd was hushed, but burst out again when Blind Tom left the poor fellow behind, and dashed on with the other horses neck and neck round the fields, leaping a fence or two, before the poor stunned rider could roll over and pick himself up. Oh, it was too droll--that plucky horse, dashing along with the rest, shooting over the fences, up to time, and acting like a soldier charging under command. I could just have gone down and kissed the splendid creature, and the whole crowd--thousands and thousands--set up shout after shout that you could have heard almost on the Green Mountains. Another horse came out first best on the second round, but a couple of men, right behind me, insisted that Blind Tom ought to have the money--what money I didn't understand--but I agreed with the men, if there was anything that a horse could accept, Blind Tom was the animal for the money. Sisters, there don't seem much that is wrong about this. You can't see any amount of deep iniquity in it, can you now? I didn't discover anything poisonous to the moral character; but then we female women don't always see deep enough into great social and religious questions, and horse-racing is one. What do you think the gloves and neckties meant? What hidden sin lay buried under the pools? What, after all, took that great multitude up to that beautiful hollow among the hills? Gambling, my dear; male and female gambling, nothing more, nothing less. The horses run for money. The jockeys ride for money. The men bet money, hats, gloves, hundreds, thousands, on this horse and that. Everybody gambles, and everybody likes it. Sisters, that poor man's hat was a pool; there wasn't a drop of water in it; still it was a pool. The two five-cent pieces I threw into it were a dead loss to charity. The scraps of crumpled paper meant dollars. The heap of bills that I tucked away in my pocket-book, innocent as twenty lambs, was money that I had won gambling, ignorantly, innocently. With Christianity at my heart, and gambling money in my pocket, I feel demoralized as a church member; yet I must confess it exhilated me as if I had been on the top of a high mountain, and was looking down with delicious dizziness. I a gambler, I a diver into pools no larger than a man's hat, but dangerous as the bottomless pit! I cannot realize it; and when realized, it seems to me as if I couldn't be properly penitent. That sort of thing doesn't seem so awful to me as it did before I got into it, in this pleasant, innocent, and sweetly promiscuous manner. Is this "rolling sin like a sweet morsel under the tongue"? Am I getting faithless to the trust with which I set forth on this city mission?