THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLD.
By Editor
FROM the Oakland Evening Tribune we clip the following description of the actions of a crowd while viewing a horse-race. Read it, and then consider whether the race-track is a place where a Christian can go. How much of the Spirit of Christ could a person retain who had voluntarily placed himself in such a mad crowd? A race-track, while a race is actually in progress, is one of the most animated spectacles in the world. There is movement everywhere, and the excitement is intense. The fact that some wild maniac is trying to stand on his head in the grand stand, or that a handsome woman is shrieking at the top of her voice and swearing between shrieks, is neither noticed nor commented upon, for everybody is doing the same thing. Even a base-ball game cannot excite a crowd as a closely contested race does. Everybody seems to lose his head whether he has money bet on the result or not. A man's boisterous nature leaps up like a startled giant, and carries all before it with a whoop and a yell, leaving him presently wondering what it was all about, and why he has been making such a howling idiot of himself. There is a powerful magnetism in an excited crowd, and nowhere is this influence felt so perceptibly as on the race-track. Men and women lose their identity in the ebullition of the moment, and act more like raging animals than human beings. When the horses start they are comparatively quiet, and content themselves with simply yelling the name of the leading horse. At the quarter pole the relative positions of the horses are shouted. When the half pole is reached there is generally a dispute all over the track as to which of the horses has the best of it, with an occasional inquiry regarding the identity of the horse in the rear. At the three-quarters the experts begin to decide the race, becoming more vociferous as the horses come down the back stretch. Then the mob wakes up with a yell that can be heard for a mile. . . . Bedlam is not a circumstance to a running race for blood horses, when the race is in any way a close contest; and the maniacs of Napa are not crazier than the people who assemble on a race-track during an exciting meeting.