CHAPTER XVI 



The B.D.C and B.C. M. Our Si)ortsinan makes a tour, in wliich he visits many 

 of the most celebrated fox-hunting establislinients in England. 



Our hero's next move was to London, where he had apartments 

 taken for him at one of the best hotels, in the best part of the 

 town, and stabling for twelve horses in a mews hard by. As 

 may be imagined in so young a man, he was occasionally to 

 be seen in the streets and the park with his team, in the latter, 

 indeed, always on Sunda3^s ; but he generally preferred the 

 public roads, especially the one on which his education for a 

 coachman had been completed, that to Windsor and Eton ; and 

 twice a week, during his sojourn in London, he gave a 

 dinner to his part}^ at the Castle Inn, Salt Hill, bringing them 

 back to town in the evening, performing the ground, with a 

 change at Hounslow, in two hours, to a minute. Richmond 

 was also another of his favourite rendezvous, where two or 

 three others of the amateur coachmen of his day assembled, 

 and where excellent hand-in-the-pocket dinners were partaken 

 of by the passengers which each brought down — first-class 

 men in their line, of course. But, it may be asked, were there 

 no mishaps on the road from this after-dinner work, with well- 

 bred and highly-fed cattle (the expressive epithet 'spicy' 

 was not then in the vocabulary) ? Not often. A pole was 

 broken one night between Brentford and London, by an 

 amateur working for his amateur friend, and who dropped one 

 of his reins, although a very good coachman ; and on another, 

 owing to a holt on the shoot from off' Kew Bridge, a singular 

 accident occurred. No sooner did the horses feel the drag 

 press upon them, than they got the better of their driver, also 

 a first-rate workman, and were only pulled up b}^ coming in 

 contact with some iron paling, enclosing a gentleman's 

 grounds. ' A dreadful smash, of course — a case for the 

 coroner ' ' methinks I hear my reader exclaim. Two horses 



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