scythe shall fall upon thee. The edicts of Death
are irrevocable. Dost thou hear me, Goodman?"

"Yea, I hear; and I believe in thy words.
Come down when it shall please thee."

At this Death swept through the air, and
disappeared from the sight of Misery. The
Goodman has never heard of Death since,
although he has often been told of his presence
in his neighbourhood, almost next door; so
that Misery has lived to a wonderful age, and
still dwells in rags near his pear-tree. And,
according to the solemn promise of Death,
Misery lives till the world shall be no more.

Upon hawkers' shoulders for centuries past
has this legend of the words of Scripture, that
poverty shall never cease from out the land,
been borne through the villages of France.
A learned Frenchman surmises that the Goodman
was a French child stolen away into
Italy, there re-dressed, and thence escaped home
into France. Goodman Misery, in any case,
has had his chief travels in France. Millions
of copies, describing his interviews with Peter
and Paul, the thief, and Death, have been sold by
hawkers among the road-side cabins of France.

YESTERDAY.

WHAT makes the king unhappy?
His queen is young and fair,
His children climb around him,
With waving yellow hair.

His realm is broad and peaceful,
He fears no foreign foe;
And health to his veins comes leaping
In all the winds that blow.

What makes the king unhappy?
Alas! a little thing,
That money cannot purchase,
Or fleets and armies bring.

And yesterday he had it,
With yesterday it went,
And yesterday it perished,
With all the king's content.

For this he sits lamenting,
And sighs, "alack! alack!
I'd give one half my kingdom,
Could yesterday come back!"

BOOKMAKING.

ANY person visiting the race-course at
Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot, Liverpool, Chantilly, or
any similar place in England or France, must of
late years have observed a number of regular
attendants upon these events, who are seen
throughout the racing season, first at one town
and then at another, wherever anything in the
shape of steeplechase or flat race is to come off.
There is an uniformity in the appearance of
these individuals which distinguishes them from
all other classes. Their hats are almost
invariably new, and evidently bought at fashionable
shops. They are, with scarcely an exception,
clean shaved, or at most only wear a
thin mutton-chop whisker. Their garments are
nearly new, and, with the exception of a somewhat
profuse quantity of watch-chain knick-
knacks, they wear no more jewellery than well-
dressed men should. When they meet on the
platform at a railway, they always surname
each other in the most cordial manner. "How
are you, Jones?" "Fine day, Robinson," "Glad
to see you, Brown." It is clear at a glance
that these persons, though they appear to have
abundant leisure, have their minds preoccupied
by business. These persons are "bookmakers."
Their trade is to attend every race of importance
run in this country, in France, and even
some few in Germany, and to make money by
betting—by "bookmaking"—not upon the
way in which one horse beats the speed or
the stamina of another horse, but by careful
calculations, and making the result of betting
upon one event cover that of another: to turn
their money, and make an uncommon good
thing out of what to the world outside the
betting world, is almost invariably a snare and
a loss.

There was a time when betting upon racing
was confined to those who really took an
interest in, or, had some knowledge of, horses.
But times have changed. The peer bets his
hundreds, the stock-broker his tens, the costermonger
his half-crowns. They cannot all bet
one with another, for they have other occupations,
and their time would be inconveniently
consumed in seeking for persons to take or lay
them the odds, and who would be good for
payment should they lose. The consequence
has been that the demand for betting agents
has created the supply, and, excepting a few
turf magnates who know each other well, everybody
who in these days wishes to bet, looks
out for a "bookmaker."

As in every other profession, there are good
and bad men among the bookmakers; there
are honest men who make a living by honest
means and fair dealing, and there are men
who will take all money paid them, but who
make themselves conspicuous by their absence
when called upon to pay what they have lost.
To the honour of the new calling, the former
class predominate greatly, and if any person
wishing to bet finds himself in the hands of a
"welcher"—the name given to scamps who
take everything and pay nothing—it must be
his own fault.

The respectable bookmaker is generally—
almost invariably—a self-made man. One of
them, a man who could write a cheque (and,
what is more, have it cashed) for fifty thousand
pounds, was once a waiter in a well-
known West-end hotel famous some ten or
a dozen years ago as the resort of military men
given to betting, and for the sanded floor of its
coffee-room. Another, whose word is good
any day among turf men for twenty-five or
thirty thousand pounds, was, about half a
dozen years back, butler and valet to a well-
known sporting nobleman. A third, once kept
a small grocer's shop in a country town in the