Bookie

‘You won’t believe it,’ he [Fitz McGee] said. ‘Those dummies won’t let me scratch! The horse is gonna be odds‐on and I’ve got a chunk bet on him out of town. Never get the bookie call it off this late.’

[…] although I had not felt the power of the truth on my own heart, yet I took particular care to read all the little bookies before I put them into the hands of the children.

When, under the old regime, after the sermon was over “little bookies” were handed round, with this title—“The Communion Office, according to the use of the Church of Scotland,” was this nothing more than a handing about of lies in right hands, because the English Office was not bound up with them?

Gems, Jewels, Happy Stories for Boys, and Happy Stories for Girls, are the names of four attractive packets filled with those nice little bookies which are so much liked by young people.

Little Miss Muffet / Sat on a tuffet / Not eating curds and whey. / Instead, she ate cookies / And read little bookies / She saw advertised yesterday.

‘Read a bookie, Mummy.’ Tasha, my oldest, plump, pink, and beady-eyed, pulled at my leg. ‘Read a bookie.’ I sighed, and looked down at the little girl, surrounded by her heap of strewn books and balding teddies.

This year, the five finalists were all females living in New York City who had published precious little bookies they called novels—or were they hybrid short-story amalgamations?

Thus spoke our brave captain; but at the very same time, he responded in an entirely different spirit to questions from other prisoners who also sometimes begged for the “little bookies”: “I’ll show you bookies! Nonsense, nonsense! The Gospels and the Bible should be all a prisoner needs for spiritual sustenance.”