About Breeches and Boots, 127 



mencing the world as hangers-on in a stable, and sleeping 

 m their clothes on the straw. Their manners and language 

 were not always agreeable, and their demands were exces- 

 sive ; their evidence in courts of justice respecting runaway 

 matches, smuggling affairs, prize-lights, elections, and so on, 

 were not received without much cross-examination, as their 

 memories were the longest or the shortest, as occasion served. 

 They were the bad men of female authors' moral story books, 

 though I remember a quasi-tract called " John the Post-boy," 

 which pictured an imaginary hero who never rode on a 

 Sunday unless he satisfied himself that the job was a work 

 of necessity, and who always read the service to himself at 

 leisure hours, if he missed church. There might have been 

 one or two such post-boys, but I do not think they fairly 

 represented theii- party. I wonder by the way that tailors 

 do not reproduce a very useful part of the old post-boy's 

 dress, which consisted of double-milled cloth overalls, 

 perfectly weather proof, which came from the hips to the 

 ankle over the boots, and far superior to any indiarubber. 



I remember a very wicked pair of tops in the dock at 

 Bow Street in 18J:2, after Ascot. The owner was a stout, 

 oily-faced man, with a juicy mouth and prominent front 

 tooth, dressed in blue and brass, buff waistcoat and cords, 

 who, in company with two others, very respectable-looking 

 men, had robbed a man of colour of some hundred sove- 

 reigns, watch, chain, rings and jewellery, on the road to and 

 from Ascot, and on the course. The late Mr. Lewis got 

 them off for want of jurisdiction, as the prosecutor, who was 

 hazy and frightened at cross-examination, could not swear 

 to any particular offence on the course within the magis- 

 trate's jurisdiction. 



The owner of the tops was at Epsom in 1843 with the 

 same companions, and invited me to join him at thimble- 

 rig, and offered to go ten pounds for us both if I would 



