The victims return home, the wiser ones satisfied with their recent experience, and determined to sell their sulkies and break their horses to the plow. The fools, on the other hand, are sure that now they know all about it. They have seen a professor of high art, and burn with ambition to be like him. They buy little caps of the same pattern, stick their hands in their pockets as nearly as possible in his style, and converse only in the phrases current in the stable. Their manners, as well as their clothes, smell strong of the horse. They devote their whole minds to the cause. They know more about the last race than the last war, and are more familiar with the names of fast trotters than with those of our great statesmen and generals. They can explain the pedigree of some favorite nag in a more satisfactory manner than they can their own, and take more pride in it. The tavern is the school where they pursue their professional studies, and the sages of the bar-room and the philosophers of the barn are their instructors. In some cases idleness, low company, and drink produce their natural fruit; the property inherited from the dead or dishonestly obtained from the living is soon squandered, the victim graduates as hostler, and, like some devotee of olden time, consecrates himself, soul and body, to the service of the brute which he admires. In others, the aspirant really reaches the high eminence at which he aims, and becomes a first-class cheat, learned in horse-craft and equally wise in the art of deceiving men--a restless operator in his chosen line of business, whose advent in a neighborhood is a signal for all to be on their guard, and at whose departure people breathe more freely. The "Sports of the Turf," as they are called, are a mere compound of fraud and folly. Betting is the soul of horse-racing, and a thievish desire to get money without earning it is the soul of betting. How many "trials of speed" would there be if, by some method which man has never yet discovered, betting on the results could be wholly prevented? Vice in all its forms--gambling, drunkenness, lying, cheating, profanity, rioting, and fighting--are the natural adjuncts of every race-course. Human birds of prey flock to it from under the whole heavens, and gorge themselves to the full. And with all this evil it has not one redeeming feature. As an amusement it is essentially low and animal. If two horses run a race, any body who is not an idiot knows that in all probability one will come out ahead of the other; and who but an idiot will care which it is? What matters it whether a horse that belongs to some branded swindler can go a mile in three minutes or two? Why should people leave their useful employments, and assemble in thousands, from far and near, merely to see one horse beat another horse? The whole thing is senseless.