And then, in spite of all his care, misfortunes would come.

"A cursed garron, of whom nobody had ever heard the name! If a man mayn't take the liberty with such a brute as that, when is he to take a liberty ?" So had he expressed himself plaintively, endeavoring to excuse himself when on some occasion a race had been won by some outside horse which Captain Boodle had omitted to make safe in his betting-book.
He was regarded by his intimate friends as a very successful man; but I think myself that his life was a mistake.

To live with one's hands ever daubed with chalk from a billiard-table, to be always spying into stables and rubbing against grooms, to put up with the narrow lodgings which needy men encounter at race meetings, to be day after day on the rails running after platers and steeple-chasers, to be conscious on all occasions of the expediency of selling your beast when you are hunting, to be counting up little odds at all your spare moments--these things do not, I think, make a satisfactory life for a young man.

And for a man that is not young, they are the very devil! Better have no digestion when you are forty than find yourself living such a life as that! Captain Boodle would, I think, have been happier had he contrived to get himself employed as a tax-gatherer or an attorney's clerk.
On this occasion Doodles soon went, as had been expected, and Harry found himself smoking with the two foreigners.

Pateroff was no longer eloquent, but sat with his cigar in his mouth as silent as Colonel Schmoff himself.