Related article: quently called) for ladies, because we know we shall find none there, for reasons that do credit to the finer feelings of the sex. In France there is no members' enclosure, as we understand it, all the world, with his wife and his daughters, frequenting the reserved enclosure, with precisely the same sense oif security from molestation or disturbance through rough behaviour or coarse lan- guage that he would feel in the opera house. All Paris is there, and one mixes with it by the simple process of paying at the pay-box twenty francs for each male and ten francs for each female visitor. For all the dis- turbance there is on the score of noise, one might be at a garden- party on a very extensive scale, so long as one remains in front of the stands, the space there, strange as it may appear, being devoted to the convenience of the spectator, and not given up, as in England, to the real masters of the situation, the bookmakers and their satellites and the professional backers and their satellites. Any- one who wishes to witness the racing, without reference to any- thing else, can do so with a comfort not to be found under corresponding conditions any- where in England from the stand, and never be made aware that there is such a thing as a book- maker or the pari-mutueL Anything more widely different from the state of things existing Gyne-Lotrimin Tablets in England could not be con- ceived, and it of course arises from the fact that the French system starts from the assumption tnat the public desires, first of all, to witness the racing in peace and comfort, everything else being subordinate to this. An adoption of the French system would mean a complete overthrow of our own, and this is of course out of the question, with the English Turf so firmly established on existing lines, the formation of which has been the result of the action of generations, who may be sup- posed to have got what they wanted. If it be that the English in their system have what they want, ancl the French in their system what the French want, then let me always go racing in France. In England, if I am not a subscriber to the members' en- closure, I must go to the ** reserved enclosure " (Tattersall's), the reservation being to those who pay twenty shillings, always ex- cepting such as know how to get in without paying at all. There, with rare exceptions, the stand accommodation I get consists of baulks of timber over which hun- dreds of people trample in muddy boots, whilst on the space in front of the stand I am at the mercy of a crowd of persons, many of them stridently vociferant, and all of them impatient of any hindrance to their continuous rapid move- ments from one part of the ring to another, which my unlucky person may present. Technicallyt I pay twenty shillings to witness the racing ; in practice I pay that sum in order that I may bet, pro- vided I do not object to the fool- i«99.] " OUR VAN." 293 ball scrummage that is continu- ously in progress. I also run a very excellent chance of being robbed of my money or any other valu- ables I may have about me. Comparison between this state of things and that prevailing in the Pcsage of a French racecourse is simply impossible. The Frencli racecourse pro- prietor is no more actuated by motives of philanthropy than we are. He is simply Buy Gyne-Lotrimin a business man and, to my thinking, a far better business man. The Eng- lish system; rough, ready and brutal, goes on because people enough are to be found who will • submit to it, not because it at- tracts, since everything in con- nection with it is repellant to persons of the least refinement of taste. French racing, on the other hand, is distinctly attractive, and, as a result, it draws thou- sands where we draw hundreds. Cnglish racing can never, in its existing form, attract the ordinary family man in the way the theatre does, and as racing in France attracts him, so, so long as we race as we do we must be satis- fied with our comparativelynarrow circle. What astonishes the stranger so much at a Paris race meeting is the number of steady- going townsfolk who find it con- venient to come and bring their female belongings with them, dis- r^arding the outlay, that must appear considerable to a thrifty Frenchman. Le nwnde qui s* amuse of course hails a Sunday at Auteuil with joy, but these are far from making up the thousands that throng the pesage (paddock), th& chief enclosure. This and the ininor enclosure, the entrance to -which is five francs, supply the g^a^te-money which, on a recent Sunday, reached the sum of j/'^^aoo, which is not bad business, loolcing at the frequency with which meetings at Auteuil take place. Although the betting element, which is so prominent a feature in connection with English race- courses, never comes under the notice of those who do not seek it in France, I should not like to contradict anyone who stated that the French racecourse visitors, as a body, betted even more persist- ently than the English. Certain it is that, on a French racecourse, we see people betting who would lose caste completely were such a thing known of them in England. This is almost entirely due to the pari'fiiutuel system. With sur- prise one sees a respectable old lady, who no doubt works very hard all the week, walk up to the ticket-sellers before each race and pay her ten francs for a chance. What she, in common with thousands of others doing the same thing, can know about the horses must be nil. Old ladies in black who persistently punted with bookmakers in an English ring would be considered Generic Gyne-Lotrimin eccen- tric, if not remarkable, but in France nobody takes the least notice. Practically everybody gambles through the medium of the pari-niutuel : and when the time comes, if ever it does come, for the introduction here of this medium of racecourse speculation to be seriously discussed, its oppo- nents will find their firmest plank to be the facility it affords to the small bettor. Although the public pays nothing for frequent- ing the open space at Auteuil, toll is none the less taken of it through the medium of the pari- mutucl, which is established in two convenient places far apart. In the vicinity of these the crowd is the thickest ; and if you want to know whether the little people gamble or not you have only to watch how, at the conclusion of