The foreign quarter is not always thinking of the dangers it is guarding against. That it thinks also a great deal of its amusement, goes without saying. I have observed that this is a special characteristic of the Briton abroad. At home the middle-class man—or woman—is chary of pleasure, taking it as if it were something he had hardly a right to; but abroad he seizes eagerly the smallest opportunity for amusing himself, demanding amusement as something that hardly compensates him for his exile from his native land. So it has come that I, a looker-on, with less strong bonds than those from the Old Country binding me to my father's land, fancy that these exiles have in the end a far better time than the men of the same class who stay at home. I am apt to have no pity for them whatever.
One thing is certain, people keep horses here in Peking who could not dream of such a luxury in England. True, they are only ponies fourteen hands high, but a great deal of fun can be got out of pony racing. And racing-stables are a feature of the Quarter. Not that they are in the Quarter. On the plain, about five miles to the west of the city, lies the little race-course, and dotted about within easy distance of this excellent training-ground are the various training-stables for the ponies. The China pony comes from Mongolia, where close watch and ward is kept over him, and neither mares nor stallions are exported.
“If I could only get hold of a mare,” sighs the young racing man, but he sighs in vain. Meanwhile he can indulge in the sport of kings cheaply.
“I've joined another fellow in a racing-stable,” said a man to me, soon after my arrival in Peking, and I looked upon him with something of the awe and respect one gives to great wealth. I had not thought he was so well off. He saw my mistake and laughed.
“The preliminary expenses are only thirty pounds,” he went on, “and I don't intend they shall be very heavy. We can have good sport at a moderate cost.” Of course moderate cost is an elastic term, depending on the purse of the speaker, but in this case I think it meant that men of very ordinary means, poor exiles who would live in a six-roomed flat with a couple of maidservants in England, might have a good time without straining those means unduly.