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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism
of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real
Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of
government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows
out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice
or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively
quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and
with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings, -
to which I plead very susceptible, - the disguise is too thin that
covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its supporters are
the Southern gentry, - fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
