Various

“ But there is also a light, flimsy, fly-away-kind of speculator, a May-day betting-man—a youth fresh, perhaps, from school and the country, with whom his friends have hardly yet made up their minds what to do—who is at present seeing as much as he can see of town, upon what he finds decidedly small means. He has an ambition to appear fast; has of course a great admiration for fast people ”

“ He will drop fishing words to other gazers, will try to overhear whispered remarks, will sidle towards any jockey-legged or ecurial—costumed individual, and aim more especially at getting into the good graces of the betting-office keeper, who, when his business is slack, comes forth from behind the partition and from the duties of the pigeon-hole, to stretch his legs and hold turf-converse. The betting-office keeper is the speculator's divinity. ”

“ During genial weather, when the sun heats the soil to 150 degrees, its perfumed foliage scents the air; whilst to snow-storm and frost it is insensible: blooming through all; expanding its little purple flowers to the day, and only closing them to wither after fertilisation has taken place. As the life of a moth may be indefinitely prolonged whilst its duties are unfulfilled, so the flower of this little mountaineer will remain open through days of fog and sleet, till a mild day facilitates the detachment of the pollen and the fecundation of the ovarium. ”

“ As insanity is the more affecting when we observe its victim to be unconscious of the visitation, so does my heart bleed most particularly for the Martyr Sex, when I observe them undergoing severe oppressions without knowing it. So natural is suffering to the sex, or so accustomed are they to it, that they subject themselves spontaneously to enormous loads of trouble and torture, which no one would think of imposing upon them, and which they might easily avoid. It might almost be said, that suffering has a sort of fascination for them, drawing them placidly into it, whether they will or not. ”

“ M. de Véron himself was frequently in the habit of calling, on his way to or from Mon Séjour, for a pâté and a little lively badinage with the comely widow; and so frequently, at one time, that Edouard le Blanc was half-inclined—to Madame Carson's infinite amusement—to be jealous of the rich, though elderly merchant's formal and elaborate courtesies. It was on leaving her shop that he had slipped and sprained his ankle. ”

“ But the betting-lists are the attraction—these are the dice of the betting-man: a section of one of the side-walls within the office is devoted to them. They consist of long strips of paper—each race having its own slip—on which are stated the odds against the horses. Hasty and anxious are the glances which the speculator casts at the betting-lists: he there sees which are the favourites ”

“ The morning has grown apace, and shews the mountain-sides and table-land teeming with life. 'The cry is still, they come;' and long before mid-day, it is calculated that there are at least 1200 persons on the hill—many of them spectators of the scene, but most of them actors in it. ”

“ Every one has heard of the butterfly-plant: there is one on the stage now before us, and as the breeze gently waves its slender stalks, each tipped with a vegetable butterfly, it becomes almost difficult to imagine that we are not watching the movements of a real insect flitting among the plants. Here is a spike of Gongora maculata, bearing no faint resemblance to a quantity of brown insects with expanded wings collected round the stem. Close to it are some Brassias, mimicking with equal fidelity insects of a paler colour, besides hundreds of others equally curious and beautiful. ”

“ We must not pass over a class of speculators who bet, and yet who are not true betting-men: they do not wish to be seen in betting-shops, yet cannot keep away. They are not loungers, for they may be observed passing along the thoroughfare seemingly with all desirable intentness upon their daily business; but they suddenly disappear as they arrive at the door of the betting-shop. These are your respectable men; worthy, solid, family men. But it is not easy to enter a betting-shop, and avoid rubbing against some clinging matter. Betting-men generally are not nice in their sensibilities ”

“ The sentimental bavardage of boys in love will be lost upon me. You will, as you ought, espouse Mademoiselle de Mérode, who is, I am told, a very superior and amiable person; and as to Adéline, she will console herself. A girl with her advantages will always be able to marry sufficiently well, though not into the family of a millionaire. But my present business with you, Monsieur Eugène de Véron, relates to a different and much more important matter. Edouard has just confided to me a very painful circumstance. ”

“ The betting-office takes a great dislike in its own mind to a particular horse, the favourite of the betting-men. It makes bets against that horse, which amount in the aggregate to a fortune; and then it buys the object of its frantic dislike. ”

“ These may be touters to the office: some may be victims, who have once won a stake. The latter now neglect their ordinary calling, and pass the whole of their time in the purlieus of betting-shops. As for the touters—betting-offices are not progressive without the aid of touters—they are gentlemen who have in their time worn many kinds of character, who have always existed one way or another on the very outskirts of honesty, till some fine morning a careless step brings them from that neutral ground into the domain of the law, where they are laid hold of. ”

“ The inhabitants of the district in which it is found shewed little sympathy with the excitement produced, a fact which should have led the gold-hunters to pause and ponder; for they were as likely to know the nature of the substance sought as persons at a distance, and just as likely to appropriate it, if it really were gold. But under the influence of their credulity, our adventurers drew a conclusion quite different—namely, that the people at the foot of the hill affected indifference, in order to deceive those at a distance, and keep all the treasure to themselves. ”

“ To see the struggles she makes in such circumstances to keep her skirts from dragging in the mud, or the patience with which she submits to their unavoidably doing so, and to think of the sad condition of her lower extremities all the time—to reflect, moreover, that all this trouble and suffering could be avoided by merely having skirts of a sufficient, but not over-sufficient length—presents such an affecting picture of evils voluntarily encountered and heroically sustained, as but rarely occurs in the course of human life. ”

“ Whereupon the betting-men grow seedier and more seedy; some of the more mercurial go off in a fit of apoplectic amazement; some betake themselves to Waterloo Stairs on a moonless night; some proceed to the Diggings, some to St Luke's, and some to the dogs; some become so unsteady, that they sign the wrong name to a draft, or enter the wrong house at night, or are detected in a crowd with their hand in the wrong man's pocket. But by degrees everything comes right again. The insane are shut up—the desperate transported—the dead buried—the deserted families carted to the workhouse ”

“ About fifteen years ago, some thousands of Dutch colonists sold their farms, packed their household gear in their huge capacious wagons, and with their wives and children—in all, at least 10,000 souls—accompanied by myriads of cattle, sheep, and horses, crossed the Orange River, and plunged into the vast wilderness beyond. Some spread themselves over the rich pastures in the country lying immediately north of that river, and now forming the infant colony which is presently to be described. ”

“ The mountain pathways became immediately alive with human beings, and noises arose like the hum of a city heard at a distance during the busiest hours of the day. In the villages immediately adjoining the place of resort, the excitement was wholly confined to youngsters and idlers, who are ever ready to seize upon novelty and enter upon bustle ”

“ It is not always, indeed, that the Sex have a master torment, like tight stays, to endure; but certainly they are never without some source of either anguish or inconvenience to keep their martyr power in exercise. For one thing, they are sadly afflicted with over-large shoes. Strange to say, though there are artists pretending to be ladies' shoemakers, the sex never get shoes sufficiently small. ”

“ Seediness is the prominent feature of the betting mass, as they are on such occasions collected—seediness of dress and of character. Yet amongst the groups are some better-looking kine, some who seem to fatten, and who costume themselves in fully-napped cloth, and boast of ostentatious pockets, and hats which advertise the owner as knowing a thing or two. ”

“ The mania lasted fully three weeks, not that any one person was under its influence all that time—for, singularly enough, the man who had been once there rarely if ever returned—but, like an epidemic, it spread wide, and only ceased by a change in the intellectual atmosphere. There could not be less than 300 persons upon an average each day upon the hill, either searching for the supposed treasure, or waiting to ascertain the result from those that did. ”

“ In no previous season have the plants appeared in finer condition. A few years ago, nobody could grow roses fit to be seen in pots; many said it was impossible to do so: now, one can scarcely imagine anything finer than they are seen at the metropolitan flower-shows. Both in healthy appearance, and in fineness of flower, they exceed those which we admire so much in the open garden in summer. One or two are conspicuous, though all are beautiful. ”

“ But, indeed, it must be quite impossible ever to make sufficient acknowledgment of that wonderful power of endurance for its own sake which you shew in the most trivial, as in the most important phases of life! ”

“ The money-making, prosperous betting-office is quite a different thing. It is not advisable for concerns which intend making thousands in a few years, to pay the superintendents liberally, and to keep well-clothed touters—to conduct themselves, in short, like speculative offices. They must not depend entirely upon chance. Chance is very well for betting-men, but will not do for the respectable betting-office keepers, who are the stakeholders. ”

“ Imagine a bat with expanded wings, with the addition of a tail, spread out before you, having on its breast a rosette of narrow ribbon, of the same dusky colour, and you will gain some idea of its form and colour. ”

“ The spire of the church on Chiswick green is peeping above the houses in the distance; and by the time I have noticed the increase of bustle on the road, and about the inn-doors, the cab has stopped at one of the garden entrances. Early as I am, many others are before me, and are waiting for the hour of admission—two o'clock. The carriages of those already arrived are drawn up in rank upon the green; policemen are everywhere to preserve order; ostlers are numerous, with buckets of water and bundles of hay ”

“ You will marry Mademoiselle de Mérode; or if not, he added with iron inflexibility of tone and manner—'Eugène de Véron is likely to benefit very little by his father's wealth, which the said Eugène will do well to remember is of a kind not very difficult of transference beyond the range of the law of inheritance which prevails in France. The leprosy of the Revolution,' continued M. de Véron as he rose and put on his hat, 'may indeed be said to have polluted our very hearths, when we find children setting up their opinions, and likings and dislikings, forsooth! ”

“ There is nothing a better prides himself on more than being in the possession of some, to the common herd, unattainable secret—something only to be obtained once in a lifetime, and then only after severe losses—a secret brought out by some train of fortuitous and most intricately-woven events. ”

“ In fine, it must have become necessary to fix a rent upon the diggings, in order to constitute a right to labour in them; and still further, to levy a tax to provide a police, if not a military force, to preserve order; and after these deductions are made, together with the incomes derived from previous occupations, and the great uncertainty connected with the vocation—to say nothing of the labour and discomforts to be endured—we cannot think gold-digging a profitable or desirable pursuit. ”

“ A betting-office may display on its small show-board two bronzed plaster horses, rampant, held by two Ethiopian figures, nude; or it may prefer making a show of cigars. Many offices have risen out of simple cigar-shops. When this is the case, the tobacco business gives way, the slow trade and fast profession not running well together. An official appearance is always considered necessary. A partition, therefore, sufficiently high not to be peered over, runs midway across the shop, surmounted with a rail. ”