MISERIES OF BAD QUARTERS. 453 



A chop or steak is provided. If he does not eat it, he 

 may starve : if he does, his pleasure for the next day is 

 possibly destroyed by his unpleasant sufferings from 

 indigestion. He gets some sour beer, which gives him 

 the heart-burn, and probably calls for brandy, or gin ; 

 the one execrably bad and unwholesome ; the other of 

 the worst quality ; and, of course^ mixed with water, 

 by which adulteration is derived the greatest part of 

 the publican's profit. The spirit merchants make it, 

 what they call above proof, in order to allow for its 

 being diluted, the doing which, so far from dishonesty, 

 is now the common practice, not only with many re- 

 spectable innkeepers, but by retail merchants themselves. 

 Our young sportsman, at last, retires to a miserable 

 chamber and a worse bed ; where, for want of ordering 

 it to be properly aired, he gets the rheumatism ; arid, 

 from the draughts of air that penetrate the room, he is 

 attacked with the tooth-ache. He rises to a breakfast 

 of bad tea, without milk ; and then starts for his day's 

 sport, so (to use a fashionable term) " bedevilled" that 

 he cannot " touch a feather :" and, in the evening, re- 

 turns to his second edition of misery. 



On the other hand, an old campaigner would, under 

 such circumstances, do tolerably well, and have his 

 complete revenge on the fish or fowl of the place. 



His plan, knowing the improbability of getting any 

 thing to eat, would be to provide himself with a hand- 

 basket at the last country town which he had to pass 

 through, before he reached his exile ; and there stock 

 it with whatever good things presented themselves. 

 He. then arrives at the pothouse, which the distance, 

 or the badness of the roads, might oblige him to do the 

 previous day. His first order is for his sheets and bedding 



