XXV 



" Oh, perfectly ! I was well acquainted with him 

 at Cambridge." 



" Are those adventures really true, or the mere 

 coinage of a fanciful brain ?" 



" True to the life. I have seen him at the bottom 

 of a ditch fifty times ; and rolled in every kennel 

 within twenty miles of his own door !" 



Now this is by no means so agreeable an acknow- 

 ledgment of my equestrian merits as I could desire, 

 for the inexperienced in these matters little know 

 how many unpleasant mishaps are indispensable to 

 the acquisition of a tolerably firm seat. It is as 

 little gratifying to one*s self-complacency to be dis- 

 tinguished as the hero of a hundred falls, as it would 

 be to hear a daily recapitulation of the hundred 

 floggings whereby you were converted from a dull 

 schoolboy into a first-class man : and yet perhaps 

 it is less annoying on the whole than a predicament 

 in which I was lately placed of the very opposite 

 character. A little cross-bred, vicious beast, of 

 considerable pretensions as to speed, but none at 

 all to beauty or any other merit, w as " trotted 

 out" before a circle of ladies and gentlemen, to be 

 admired previously to a pony race for which his 

 owner had entered him. His height scarcely ex- 

 ceeded thirteen hands : a lad who w as to ride him, 

 mounted him with dexterity, and showed off his 



