The day after the race, arriving, we returned with our document to Mr. Cheerful’s establishment, and found it in great confusion. It was filled by a crowd of boys, mostly greasy, dirty, and dissipated; and all clamouring for Mr. Cheerful. Occupying Mr. Cheerful’s place, was the miraculous boy; all alone, and unsupported, but not at all disconcerted. Mr. Cheerful, he said, had gone out on ‘’tickler bizniz’ at ten o’clock in the morning, and wouldn’t be back till late at night. Mrs. Cheerful was gone out of town for her health, till the winter. Would Mr. Cheerful be back to-morrow? cried the crowd. ‘He won’t be here, to-morrow,’ said the miraculous boy. ‘Coz it’s Sunday, and he always goes to church, a’ Sunday.’ At this, even the losers laughed. ‘Will he be here a’ Monday, then?’ asked a desperate young green-grocer. ‘A’ Monday?’ said the miracle, reflecting. ‘No, I don’t think he’ll be here, a’ Monday, coz he’s going to a sale a’ Monday.’ At this, some of the boys taunted the unmoved miracle with meaning ‘a sell instead of a sale,’ and others swarmed over the whole place, and some laughed, and some swore, and one errand boy, discovering the book – the only thing Mr. Cheerful had left behind him – declared it to be a ‘stunning good ’un.’ We took the liberty of looking over it, and found it so. Mr. Cheerful had received about seventeen pounds, and, even if he had paid his losses, would have made a profit of between eleven and twelve pounds. It is scarcely necessary to add that Mr. Cheerful has been so long detained at the sale that he has never come back. The last time we loitered past his late establishment (over which is inscribed Boot and Shoe Manufactory), the dusk of evening was closing in, and a young gentleman from New Inn was making some rather particular enquiries after him of a dim and dusty man who held the door a very little way open, and knew nothing about anybody, and less than nothing (if possible) about Mr. Cheerful. The handle of the lower door-bell was most significantly pulled out to its utmost extent, and left so, like an Organ stop in full action. It is to be hoped that the poor gull who had so frantically rung for Mr. Cheerful, derived some gratification from that expenditure of emphasis. He will never get any other, for his money.

But the public in general are not to be left a prey to such fellows as Cheerful. O, dear no! We have better neighbours than that, in the Betting-shop way. Expressly for the correction of such evils, we have The Tradesmen’s Moral Associative Betting Club; the Prospectus of which Institution for the benefit of tradesmen (headed in the original with a racing woodcut), we here faithfully present without the alteration of a word.