The Brookhaven leader., 1890-08-14


Ter 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
evident 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: a black horse-that
meant famine; pale horse-that meant
death; a white horse-that meant vic
tory.
As the Bible makes a favorite OF tho
horse, the patriarch and the prophet
and the evangelist and the apostle,
stroking his sleek hide, and patting his
rounded neck, and tcnderly lifting his
exGuisitely formed hoof, and listening
with thrill TO tho champ of his bit, so
all great natures in all ages have spo-
ken of him in ecomiastic terms. Virgil
in his Georges almost seems to pla-
| giarizc from the description of Job. The
| Duke of Wellington would not allow any
one irrevercntly to touch his old war
horse, Copenhagen, on whom he had
| ridden fifteen hours without dismount-
| ing at Watcrloo; and when old Copen-
hagen died, his master ordered a mill
tary salute fired over his grave. John
| Howard showed that he did not ex-
haust all his sympaties in plying the
human race, for when sick he writes
home: "lIas my old chaise-horse be-
| come sick or spoiled?"
But we do not think that the speed of
| the horse should be cultured at the ex-
| pense of human degradation. Horse
races, in olden times, where under the
ban of Christian people, and in our day
| the same institution has come up under
| fictitious names, and it is called
summer Meeting" almost suggestive
to positive religious exercises. And it
is called agricultural Fair" sug-
gestive of every thing 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 vagabondage and
the same denominations that were to be
ound under the old horse-racing sys-
tenn.
| never knew man yet who could
give himself to the pleasures of the turf
for long reach of time and not be bat
tered in morals. They hook up their
spanking team, and put on their sport
ing cap, and light their cigar, and take
the reins, and dash down the road to
perdition. The great day at Saratoga,
Long Branch, and Cape May, and near
ly all the other watering places, is the
day of the races. The hotels are
thronged, nearly every kind of equip
age is taken up at an al
most fabulous price, and there
are many respectable people
mingling with jockeys, and the gam
blers, and libertines, and foul-mouthed
men and flashy women. The bartender
stirs up the brandy smash. The bets
run high. The greenhorns, supposing
all is fair, put in their money soon
enough to lose it. Three weeks before
the race takes place the struggle is de-
Cided, and the men in the secret know
on which steed 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
sorbed in the struggle of bone and mus
Gle and mettle that they make a grand
harvest for the pickpockets, who carry
off the pocletboolls and portemonnaies.
Men looking on see only two horses
with two riders flying around the ring;
but there is many man on that stand
whose honor and domestic happiness
and fortune-white name, white foot,
white fiank-aro in the ring, racing
with inebriety, and with fraud, and
with profanity, and with ruin-black
neck, black foot, black flank. Neck
and neck they go in that moral EPSON.
All, my friends, have nothing to do
with horse-racing designations this sum-
mer. Long ago the English Govern
ment got through looking to the turf
for the dragooa and light-cavalry horse.
They found the turf depreciates the
stock, and it is yet, worse for men.
Thomas Hughes, the member of
Parliament and the author, known
all the world over, hearing
that new turf enterprise
was being started in this country,
wrote a letter, in which he said:
'IIeaven help you, then; for of all the
cankers of our old civilization, there is
nothing in this country approaching in
unhlushing meannesS, in rascality
holding its head high, to this belauded
institution of the British turf" An
other famous sportsman writes: "1ow
many fine domains have been shared
among these hosts of rapacious
sharks during the last 200 years;
and unless the system be altered,
how many moro are doomed to fall into
| the same surf.' The Duke of IIamil-
ton, through his rse-racing proclivi
ties, in three years got through his en-
tire fortune of $780, OO0 and l will say
that some of you are being undermined
by it. With the bull-ights of Spain
and the bear battlings of the pit, may
| the Lord God annihilate the infamous
and accursed horse racing of England
| and America.
| go further and speak of another
temptation that hovers over the water
| ing-places; and this is the tempta ton
to sacrifice physical strength. The
modern Bethesda was meant to recu-
pcrate the physical strength; and yet
how many come from tho watering
places, their health absolutely de-
stroyed! New York and Brooklyn idiots
boasting of having imbibed twenty
glasses of Congress water before break
fast Families accustomed to going to