The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1890-08-05

seer did for the dog,!Job, with mightfer
pencil, does for the horse Eighty
eight times does the Bible speak of
him. He comes into every kingly pro-
cession, and into every great occasion,
and into every triumph. 1t is very evil
dent that Job and David and Isaiah
and Ezekiel and jeremiah and John
were very fond of the horse. He came
into much of their imagery. a red
horse-that meant war; black horse
that meant famine; a pale horse
that meant death; white horse-that
meant victory.
As the Bible makes 4 favorite of the
horse, the patriarch, and the prophet,
and the evangelist, and the apostle
stroking his sleek hide, and patting his
rounded neck, and tenderly lifting his
exquisitely formed hoof, and listening
with thrill to the champ of his bit, so
Ill great natures in oil ages have
spoken of him in encomiastic terms.
Virgil in his Georges almost seems to
plagiarize from the description of job.
The Duke of Wellington would not al
low any one irrcvcrently to touch his
old war horse Copenhagen, on whom
he had ridden fifteen hours without
diSlnountins at Waterloo; and when old
i Copenhagen died his master ordered n
military salute fired over his grave.
John Howard showed that lie did not
exhaust all his sympathy in plying the
human race, for when sick lie writes
home, Has my old chaise horse be
come sick or spoiled
But we do not think that the speed
of the horse should be cultured mt the
expense of human degradation. Horse
races in oidcn times were under the
ban of Christian people, and in our day
the Same institution has come up under
fictitious names, and it is called n
summer meeting almost suggestive
of positive religious exercises, and it
is called an agricultural fair sug-
gestive of everything that is improving
in The art of farming But under these
deceptive titles are the same cheating
and the same betting the same drunk
enneSs, and the same vagabondagc, and
tie same denominations that were to be
found under the old horse racing sys-
tenn.
RACING SPOILS MORALS.
never new man yet who could
give himself to the pleasures of the
turf for n long reach of time and not
be battered in morals They hook up
their spanking team, and put on their
sporting cap, and light their cigar, and
take the rcinS, and dash down the road
to perdition The great day at Sara
toga and Long Branch and Cape May
and nearly all the other watering
places is the day of the races. The
hotels are thronged, nearly every kind
OF eiuipagc is taken upat almost fabu-
loU~ price and there are many respect
able people minsling with jockeys
and gamblers and libertines and foul
mouthed men and hashy women. The
bartender stirs up the brandy smash.
The bets run high The greenhorns,
suppo>ing all is fair, put in their money
soon enough to lose It, Three weeks
before the race takes place the struggle
is decided. aud the men III the secret
know on which stccd to bet their
money. The two men on the horses
riding around long before arranged
WHO shall beat.
Leaning from the stand or from the
carriage are men and women so alb
,orbed in the struggle of bone and
muscle and metJle that they make a
grand harvest for the pickpockets, who
carry off the pocketbooks and porte
monnaies. Men looking on see only
two horses with two riders flying around
tie ring, but there is many man on
that stand whose honor and domestic
happiness and fortune-white mne
white foot. white fanfare in the ring
racing with inebriety, and with fraud,
and with profanity, and with ruin
black meek, black foot, black flank
Neck and neck they go in that moral
EPSON.
HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Nh. my friends, have nothing to do
wrh horse racing designations this sum-
mer Long ago the English govern
ment got through looking TO the turf
for the dragon and light cavalry horse.
They found the turf depreciates the
stock, and it is yet worse for men.
Thomas Hughes, the member of parlia-
ment and the author, known all the
world over, hearing that new tu.f en-
terprise was being started in this coun
try, wrote letter in which he said,
Heaven help you. then; for of all the
cankers of our old civilization there is
nothing in this country approaching in
unbiushing nleanness, in rascality hold
ing It's head high, to this belauded insti-
tuition of the British turf"
Another famous sportsman writes:
GLOW many fine domains have been
shared among these hosts of rapacious
sharks during the last 200 years, and
ul.less the system be altered how many
more are doomed to fall into the same
gulf The Duke of Hamilton, through
his horse racing proclivities, in three
years got through his entire fortune of
$3.50, 600, and | will say that some of
you are being undermined by It. With
the bull fights of Spain and the bear
bitings of the pit may the Lord God
annihilate the infamous and accused
horse racing of England and America!
/ ca f,1rtlor nnd sneak of another