ME. SPONGE'S SFOETING TOUR. 



21 



CHAPTER V. 



MR. WAFFLES. 



AMONG a host of most meritorious 

 young men — (any of whom would 

 get up behind a bill for five hundred 

 pounds without looking to see that 

 it wasn't a thousand) — among a 

 host of most meritorious young 

 men who made their appearance at 

 Laverick Wells towards the close 

 Of Mr. Slocdolager's reign, was Mr. 

 Waffles ; a most enterprising youth, 

 just on the verge of arriving of age, 

 and into the possession of a very 

 considerable amount of charming 

 ready money. 



Were it not that a "proud aristo- 

 cracy," as Sir Robert Peel called 

 them, have shown that they can get 

 over any little deficiency of birth if 

 there is sufficiency of cash, we should 

 have thought it necessary to make 

 the best of Mr. Waffles' pedigree, 

 but the tide of opinion evidently 

 setting the other way, we shall just 

 give it as we had it, and let the proud aristocracy reject him if they 

 like. Mr. Waffles' father, then, was either a great grazier or a great 

 brazier — which, we are unable to say, " for a small drop of ink 

 having fallen," not " like dew," but like a black beetle, on the 

 first letter of the word in our correspondent's communication, it 

 may do for either — but in one of which trades he made a "mint 

 of money," and latish on iu life married a lady who hitherto had 

 filled the honourable office of dairy-maid in his house ; she was a 

 fine handsome woman, and a year or two after the birth of this 

 their only child, he departed this life, nearer eighty than seventy, 

 leaving an "inconsolable," &c, who unfortunately contracted 

 matrimony with a master pork- butcher, before she got the fine 

 flattering white monument up, causing young Waffles to be 

 claimed for dry-nursing by that expert matron the High Court of 

 Chancery ; who, of course, had him properly educated — where, it is 

 immaterial to relate, as we shall step on till we find him at college. 

 Our friend, having proved rather too vivacious for the Oxford 



MR. WAFFLES. 



