Sunday Morning Sport.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 16 December 1915, Page 3

Sunday Morning Sport.

AVHIITET-RAOING IN THE EAST

KND. (Vrom the London Times.) In the region of London called Custom House, near tlie Victoria Docks, there is a certain certain iield. It is an unprepossessing field; and although it oiler's a -wide view of me sky, it is uot the kind of iield winch one would choose to lie down and da'eam in. JJut a lieid it is, or was. It is still mainly covered with grass, and hero and there are the remains of the kind of seat which public bodies (and no other sort of bodies) find suitable for outdoor use; but the grass looks very tired and: yellow, as if it nad been up all night, and the black paling which divides it from the allotments aud the street of little houses and the other open spaces of this queer, low-lying half-suburb, half-marsh, which seems to take os unkindly to reclamation as a boy to his Sunday clothes—the black paling effectually turns it from a field into a "ground." And on Sunday mornings this ground is the scone of a very interesting spec- | tacle. After several not wholly voluntary changes of ahodie, here at length i a "concern" in the sport, or business, of whippy-racing has established itself —and apparently with some prospect | of fixity of tenure. All along one side i of the ground runs a broad cindcr track, perhaps 200 yards in length, arid' at the far end is a little shed where the dogs wait their turn. Whippetracing is a uniquely exciting sport. The dogs are taken to the post on leashes. At the far end of the course colon rodrags are waved. Each his particular rag. All strain at their leashes, becoming graduaJly more and more frantic. Their frenzy works upon the crowd. Louder and louder , grow the shouts of the bookmakers gathered near the dingy grandstand. tSilver and/ notes change own cms with bewildering speed. The hundreds ol people collected oil the ground are worked up to tense excitement. And then, almost before you can look round the heat or final is over; and to the excitement succeeds jubilation or"'disappointment, neither of 'which can get itself expressed -without the use of words unprintable andi not over-agree-able to the ear. Sometimes there are five or six hundred people at one of these Sunday morning meetings: they pour into tlu 1 district by train; and tney come even in taxi-uahs and private cars. Before and after the meeting they block the streets. There are dogs, sometimes in several dozens, and prizes that run up to £15 and £20. There is an immense amount of betting; there is an incredible deal of badi language. The patronn of the sport are not amongst the most refined, in mind or manners, and, after all, whippet-racing is a uniquely exciting sport. So perhaps its is not surprising that some of the residents in this district find these crowds and the din and the concomitants something of a nuisance on Sunday afternoon. And, if it be truo that tlie concomfitiants includte bottles containing the kind of lemonade that you ask for with a wink, and green umbrellas and large boards which—doubtless by acci- j dent—much resemble those commonly assisociated in the race-goer's mind with certain games of chance and exhibitions of sleight-of-hand, why then the inhabitants of the dastrroa, and not the inhabitants of that district alone, have some little causo for com plaints. It is said that recruiting sorgeant-s have tried their luck there on Sundays and found it all against them. You have only to look at the 'crowd Eo see that it was sure to be so. Here are men of all ages; and, among them no doubt, a great many of those workers in <!ock or factory who just now got so little leisure that it would seem churlish to condemn, their way of spending it. But the rest? It may be pure fancy; hut is it not becoming increasingly possible in these days io recognize at a glance the hale and hearty Fetchable, for whom nothing hut fetching will doF