ME. SPONGE'S SPOUTING TOUR. 



37 



CHAPTER VIII. 



or.!) TOM TOWLES 



$r& r 



TOM IN HUNTING JI.UllLl.MI.N I >. 



=^f®fIEKE are few more 

 difficult persons tc 

 identify than a 

 huntsman in un- 

 dress, and of all 

 queer ones perhaps 

 old Tom Towler 

 was the queerest. 

 ^--- »f Tom in his person 



ll2sC&^ furnished an apt 

 illustration of the 

 right appropriation 

 of talent and the 

 fitness of things, 

 for he would neither 

 have made a groom, 

 nor a coachman, nor 

 a postilion, nor a footman, nor a ploughman, nor a mechanic, nor 

 anything we know of, and yet he was first-rate as a huntsman. 

 He was too weak for a groom, too small for a coachman, too ugly 

 for a postilion, too stunted for a footman, too light for a plough- 

 man, too useless-looking for almost anything. 



Any one looking at him in " mufti " would exclaim, " what an 

 unfortunate object ! " and perhaps offer him a penny, while in his 

 hunting habiliments lords would hail him with, " Well, Tom, how 

 are you ? " and baronets ask him " how he was ? " Commoners 

 felt honoured by his countenance, and yet, but for hunting, Tom 

 would have been wasted — a cypher — an inapplicahle sort of man. 

 Old Tom, in his scarlet coat, black cap, and boots, and Tom in his 

 undress — say, shirt-sleeves, shorts, grey stockings and shoes, bore 

 about the same resemblance to each other that a three months 

 dead jay nailed to a keeper's lodge bears to the bright-plumaged 

 bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry- 

 looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting 

 as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the 

 most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was 

 seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been scalped 

 by the branch of a tree, his nose knocked into a thing like a 

 button by the kick of a horse, his teeth sent down his throat by a 



