From one of the shouting and insistent venders he bought a ticket, and he walked through the broad entrance-hall, the floor of which slanted upwards. He passed the door of a restaurant on his right, and he glanced down a staircase which led to the semi-subterranean stalls where the horses were tethered. A pungent, acrid, stable odor filled his nostrils. Then he found himself inside the immense amphitheatre, under the skeleton ribs of its roof picked out with long lines of tiny electric bulbs. Morton had a first impression of glittering hugeness, and a second of restless bustle. From a gallery behind him there came the blare and crash of a brass band playing an Oriental march; but even this did not drown the buzz and murmur of many thousand voices. The vast building seemed to Morton to be filled with men and women, all of them talking and many of them in motion. He found himself swept along slowly in the dense crowd that circled steadily around the high fence which guarded the arena wherein the horses were exhibited. This crowd was too compact for him to approach the railing, and he could not discover for himself whether or not anything was to be seen. A thin line of more or less horsy fellows fringed the fence, and seemed to be interested in what was going on. The most of the men and women who filled the broad promenade between the railing and the long tier of private boxes paid little or no attention to the arena; they gave themselves up to staring at the very gayly dressed ladies in the boxes. It struck the New England college professor that the most of those present made no pretence of caring for the horses, as though horses could be seen any day; while they frankly devoted themselves to gazing at the people of fashion penned side by side in the boxes, and not often placing themselves so plainly on exhibition. Some of those who were playing their parts on this narrow and elevated stage had the self-consciousness of the amateur, and some had the ease that comes of long practice. These latter looked as though they were accustomed to be stared at, as though they expected it of right, as though they were there on purpose to be seen. They seemed to know one another; and it struck Morton that they were apparently all members of a secret fraternity of fashion, with their own signs and passwords and their own system of private grips; and they wholly ignored the people who had not been initiated and who were not members of their society. They nodded and smiled brightly to belated arrivals of their own set. They kept up a continual chatter among themselves, the women leaning across to talk to acquaintances in the adjoining compartments, and the men paying visits to the boxes of their friends. Now and again some one in a box would recognize some one in the circling throng below; but for the most part there was no communication between the two classes. [Illustration: EXPLANATIONS]