No More Learning

While the snaffle holds, or the "long-neck" stings,
While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings,
While horses are horses to train and to race,
Then women and wine take a second place
For me--for me--
While a short "ten-three"
Has a field to squander or fence to face!
----Song of the G. R.

There are more ways of running a horse to suit your book than pulling
his head off in the straight. Some men forget this.

Understand clearly that all racing is rotten--as everything connected
with losing money must be. Out here, in addition to its inherent
rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty
on paper only. Every one knows every one else far too well for business
purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his
losings, when you are fond of his wife, and live in the same Station
with him? He says, "on the Monday following," "I can't settle just yet. "
"You say, 'All right, old man,'" and think your self lucky if you pull
off nine hundred out of a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at
it, Indian racing is immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much
worse. If a man wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round
a subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
Australian larrikin; a "brumby," with as much breed as the boy; a brace
of chumars in gold-laced caps; three or four ekka-ponies with hogged
manes, and a switch-tailed demirep of a mare called Arab because she
has a kink in her flag. Racing leads to the shroff quicker than anything
else.
But if you have no conscience and no sentiments, and good hands,
and some knowledge of pace, and ten years' experience of horses, and
several thousand rupees a month, I believe that you can occasionally
contrive to pay your shoeing-bills.

Did you ever know Shackles--b. w. g. , 15. 13. 8--coarse, loose, mule-like
ears--barrel as long as a gate-post--tough as a telegraph-wire--and the
queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand,
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l. -10s. a
head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta
for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if
ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles
was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained
himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted
him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He
objected to dictation. Two or three of his owners did not understand
this, and lost money in consequence.