Excerpt from The Sporting Life, and Other Trifles
It was distressing to be given boiled cod for lunch on the train from London, especially at a time when Dover soles could be bought for a shilling a pound even from a fishmonger. But otherwise the eve of the Grand National passed pleasantly enough.
Liverpool is crowded, but in that it hardly differs from any other city. The difference is that Liverpool is crowded to its last hotel - nay, to its last saloon bar - with the nomadic population called the racing crowd. It is a crowd that deserves the respect of every journalist, because it never tires of buying newspapers. It buys even the editions in which there is nothing to read - gathers on the pavements, indeed, to wait for a new edition as for an event of the day.
Liverpool is also distinguished from other cities by making two-thirds of a mile for a shilling the unit of payment in taxis, with an extra threepence for every additional sixth of a mile. The fare would be exceedingly difficult to work out for anybody but a higher mathematician, were it not for the taximeter.
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