SISTERS:—This horse hurdling is something that just lifts you right off your feet. All that I had seen was nothing to what was to come. All along the winding road, and the lots each side, some men went to building fences, till every few yards were fenced in, and yet seven long-legged, long-bodied, and not over fleshy horses, with riders in white, in blue, in yellow, and striped brown and yellow, were ready for another start, which they made like a thunderburst. On they came, flying and flashing through the lots, like a flock of birds, right up to the first fence. I sprang up—everybody sprang up, wild and anxious—I expected to see the whole grist of them pitch head-foremost against the rails, when up they all rose, and away they went straight over, and off like a shot to the next and the next, clearing one after another, before you could draw a deep breath. Across lots, down the road, in and out they went, jumping fences, now abreast, now in a swift line, till they came up all at once to a pond of water. I screamed right out, and felt myself growing cold, for they were rushing toward it full split, and it was wider across than the mill-stream back of our school-house. "Stop 'em, stop 'em! They'll be drowned, they'll be killed!" I screamed out, just crazy with fear. No one minded me; the whole crowd was too busy watching those wild riders to mind me if I had yelled like an engine whistle. They came rushing up nearer—nearer, almost in a line, as if some enemy were ahead, and the whole squad meant to ride right through and trample everything down. They were close by the water now, with a low fence that side. On they rushed—a whole cloud of hoofs ploughed up through the air, and those seven horses went shooting like sparrows over the fence and across the water. Their hoofs struck fire from the stone wall on the other side, and away they went, pell-mell, their riders shooting out colors like a broken rainbow, and the crowd cheering them on as if it had been a sham fight on training-day. On they flew like a young whirlwind, though one bay horse they called "Blind Tom" fell short. The rider, trying to bring him up, was pitched over his head, at which the crowd was hushed, but burst out again when Blind Tom left the poor fellow behind, and dashed on with the other horses neck and neck round the fields, leaping a fence or two, before the poor stunned rider could roll over and pick himself up. Oh, it was too droll—that plucky horse, dashing along with the rest, shooting over the fences, up to time, and acting like a soldier charging under command. I could just have gone down and kissed the splendid creature, and the whole crowd—thousands and thousands—set up shout after shout that you could have heard almost on the Green Mountains. Another horse came out first best on the second round, but a couple of men, right behind me, insisted that Blind Tom ought to have the money—what money I didn't understand—but I agreed with the men, if there was anything that a horse could accept, Blind Tom was the animal for the money. Sisters, there don't seem much that is wrong about this. You can't see any amount of deep iniquity in it, can you now? What do you think the gloves and neckties meant? What hidden sin lay buried under the pools? What, after all, took that great multitude up to that beautiful hollow among the hills? Gambling, my dear; male and female gambling, nothing more, nothing less. The horses run for money. The jockeys ride for money. The men bet money, hats, gloves, hundreds, thousands, on this horse and that. Everybody gambles, and everybody likes it. Sisters, that poor man's hat was a pool; there wasn't a drop of water in it; still it was a pool. The two five-cent pieces I threw into it were a dead loss to charity. The scraps of crumpled paper meant dollars. The heap of bills that I tucked away in my pocket-book, innocent as twenty lambs, was money that I had won gambling, ignorantly, innocently. With Christianity at my heart, and gambling money in my pocket, I feel demoralized as a church member; yet I must confess it exhilated me as if I had been on the top of a high mountain, and was looking down with delicious dizziness. I a gambler, I a diver into pools no larger than a man's hat, but dangerous as the bottomless pit! I cannot realize it; and when realized, it seems to me as if I couldn't be properly penitent. That sort of thing doesn't seem so awful to me as it did before I got into it, in this pleasant, innocent, and sweetly promiscuous manner. Is this "rolling sin like a sweet morsel under the tongue"? Am I getting faithless to the trust with which I set forth on this city mission? This much I will say in my own behalf: horse-racing, if pernicious, is awfully pleasant, and horse-betting (gloves and neckties I mean) is—well—ditto. Such a ride home as we had! Trees and grass, cool and green—no dust. The sun going down, and throwing red shadows across the fields. Carriages crowded full of smiling people, horses wild to pass each other and get home; yourself Well, sisters, I may have been wrong, but frankness is my peculiarity, and I should like to try it all over again, just once. Don't think hard of it, but I should. |