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24 means—hackneyed enough in themselves—by which the company of the Legs seduced the obstinacy of rustic virtue. "If I had fifty sons," he said, "I would never put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that I have witnessed. The temptation was really very great—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to."

There is a pathetic dignity about this simple moralising that contrasts well with the levity of his previous confession, but the state of things that it shows is really very disgusting. It is another tribute to the merit of this first of English games that it should have lived through and have lived down such a morbid condition.

"If gentlemen wanted to bet," said Beldham, "just under the pavilion sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds. These were by far the best men to bet with, because, if they lost, it was all in the way of business; they paid their money and did not grumble." The manners of some of the fraternity must have changed, not greatly for the better, since then. "Still," he continues, "they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe." And then he quotes, or Mr. Pycroft quotes—it is not very clear, and does not signify—Mr. Ward as saying, "One artifice was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead." It was as clever a piece of practical humour as it was honest. What a monstrous state of things it reveals!

And then Beldham, inspirited by Mr. Pycroft's geniality and brandy and water, goes on to assure him