MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 11 



shirted, sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with 

 the word " gin " indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter 

 Leather, the head man, was one of the fallen angels of servitude. 

 He had once driven a duke — the Duke of Dazzleton — having 

 nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into his well- 

 indented richly-fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head 

 to " let go " at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered hat. 

 Then having got in his cargo (or rubbish, as he used to call them), 

 he would start off at a pace that was truly terrific, cutting out 

 this vehicle, shooting past that, all but grazing a third, anathe- 

 matising the 'busses, and abusing the draymen. We don't know 

 how he might be with the queen, but he certainly drove as though 

 he thought nobody had any business in the street while the 

 Duchess of Dazzleton wanted it. The duchess liked going fast, 

 and Peter accommodated her. The duke jobbed his horses and 

 didn't care about pace, and so things might have gone on very 

 comfortably, if Peter one afternoon hadn't run his pole into the 

 panel of a very plain but very neat yellow barouche, passing the 

 end of Xew Bond-street, which having nothing but a simple crest 

 — a stag's head on the panel — made him think it belonged to 

 some bulky cit, taking the air with his rib, but who, unfortunately, 

 turned out to be no less a person than Sir Giles Nabern, Knight, 

 the great police magistrate, upon one of whose myrmidons in 

 plain clothes, who came to the rescue, Peter committed a most 

 violent assault, for which unlucky casualty his worship furnished 

 him with rotatory occupation for his fat calves in the " H. of C," 

 as the clerk shortly designated the House of Correction. Thither 

 Peter went, and in lieu of his lace-bedaubed coat, gold-gartered 

 plushes, stockings, and buckled shoes, he was dressed up in a suit 

 of tight-fitting yellow and black-striped worsteds, that gave him 

 the appearance of a wasp without wings. Peter Leather then 

 tumbled regularly down the staircase of servitude, the greatness 

 of his fall being occasionally broken by landing in some inferior 

 place. From the Duke of Dazzleton's, or rather from the tread- 

 mill, he went to the Marquis of Mammon, whom he very soon left 

 because he wouldn't wear a second-hand wig. From the marquis 

 he got hired to the great Irish Earl of Coarsegab, who expected him 

 to wash the carriage, wait at table, and do other incidentals never 

 contemplated by a London coachman. Peter threw this place up 

 with indignation on being told to take the letters to the post. 

 He then lived on his "means " for a while, a thing that is much 

 finer in theory than in practice, and having about exhausted his 

 substance and placed the bulk of his apparal in safe keeping, he 

 condescended to take a place as job coachman in a livery-stable — 

 a " horses let by the hour, day, or month" one, in which he enacted 

 as many characters, at least made as many different appearances, 



