Mr. Spongfs Sporting 

 Tour. 



CHAPTER I. 



OUR HERO. 



T was a murky Octo- 

 ber day that the 

 hero of our tale, Mr. 

 Sponge, or Soapey 

 Sponge, as his good- 

 natured friends call 

 him, was seen miz- 

 zling along Oxford 

 Street, wending his 

 way to the AVest. 

 Not that there was 

 anything unusual in 

 Sponge being seen 

 in Oxford Street, for 

 when in town his 

 daily perambulations 

 consist of a circuit, 

 commencing from 

 the Bantam Hotel 

 in Bond Street into 

 Piccadilly, through 

 Leicester Square, 

 and so on to Ald- 

 ridge's, in St. Mar- 

 tin's Lane, thence 

 by Moore's sporting- 

 print-shop, and on 

 through some of those ambiguous and tortuous streets that, 

 appearing to lead all ways at once and none in particular, land 

 the explorer, sooner or later, on the south side of Oxford Street. 

 Oxford Street acts to the north part of London what the Strand 



MR. SPONGF, IN OXFORD STREET. 



