I hope the reader will be as
much surprised as I was to realize that the sport of horse-racing
in England gets its name of Turf from the fact that the races are
run on the grass, and not on the bare ground, as with us. We call
the sport the Turf, too, but that is because in this, as in so
many other things, we lack incentive and invention, and are
fondly colonial and imitative; we ought to call it the Dirt, for
that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the
definition in England which our course gives, and when it began,
I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like
sweep of the horses as they skim the naked earth in the distance.
I missed also the superfluity of jockeying which delays and
enhances the thrill of the start with us, and I thought the
English were not so scrupulous about an even start as we are.
But, above all, I missed the shining faces and the gleaming eyes
of the black jockeys, who lend so much gayety to our scene, where
they seem born to it, if not of it. The crowd thickened in
English bloom and bulk, which is always fine to see, and bubbled
over with the babble of multitudinous voices, crossed with the
shouts of the book-makers.
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