MB. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 210 



finding him house, coals, and candles, and perhaps a cow, to be 

 his master ? 



Such was the case with poor Mr. Puffington, and such, we 

 grieve to say, is the case with nine-tenths of the men who keep 

 hounds ; with all, indeed, save those who can hunt themselves, or 

 who are blessed with an aspiring whip, ready to step into the 

 huntsman's boots if he seems inclined to put them off in the field. 

 How many portly butlers are kept in subjection by having a foot- 

 man ready to supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack, 

 however, the huntsman's is the most difficult one to play. A man 

 may say, " I'm dim'd if I won't clean my own boots or my own 

 horse, before I'll put up with such a fellow's impudence ;" but 

 when it comes to hunting his own hounds, it is quite another pair 

 of shoes, as Mr. Bragg would say. 



Mr. Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff ; as regularly 

 as a policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows 

 the sort of feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, 

 or any one whom we have called in to assist, takes the initiative, 

 and treats one as a nonentity, pooh-poohing all one's pet ideas, 

 and upsetting all one's well-considered arrangements. 



Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated 

 Puff accordingly. If a " perfect servant " is only to be got out of 

 the establishments of the great, Mr. Brag? might be looked upon 

 as a paragon of perfection, and now combined in his own person 

 all the bad practices of all the places he had been in. Having 

 " accepted Mr. Puffington's situation," as the elegant phraseology 

 of servitude goes, he considered that Mr. Puffington had nothing 

 more to do with the hounds, and that any interference in " his 

 department" was a piece of impertinence. Puffington felt like a 

 man who has bought a good horse, but which he finds on riding 

 is rather more of a horse than he likes. He had no doubt that 

 Bragg was a good man, but he thought he was rather more of a 

 gentleman than he required. On the other hand, Mr. Bragg's 

 opinion of his master may be gleaned from the following letter 

 which he wrote to his successor, Mr. Brick, at Lord Beynard's : — 



" Haxby House, Swillixgfoed. 

 "Dear Brick, 



" If your old mem is done daffling with yovr draft, I should 

 like to have the pick of if. Tm with one Mr. Puffington, a city 

 gent. His father was a great confectioner in the Poultry, just by 

 the Mansion House, and made his money out of Lord Mares. 

 I shall only stay with him till I can get myself suited in the rank 

 of life in which I hare been accustomed to move ; but in the mean- 

 time I consider it necessary for my own credit to do things as they 

 should be. You know my sort of hound; good shoulders, deep 



