JOHN SELLUSALL, THE TRAINER. 33 



utmost strictness. As lie was about quitting me, I suppose to 

 complete the concluding part of the lesson he received under 

 the dictatorship of the head lad, John Sellusall confronted him, 

 and Harry's finger and thumb were at the duck's tail in an 

 instant. A little in the rear of our trainer stood the "old boy," 

 Spanky, with a subdued expression upon his features, as if the 

 humour for instructing a novice was entirely evaporated. 



John Sellusall made no acknowledgment of Harry's re- 

 spectful salutation, but with his thumbs turned backwards in 

 the arm-holes of his waistcoat, he threw his keen gray eyes 

 from my ears to my heels, and with the angles of his almost 

 lipless mouth drawn back in the form of a parenthesis, remained 

 examining my form in silence. As the hare looks at the 

 pursuing hound, I, too, measured with corresponding minute- 

 ness the figure of John Sellusall, not forgetting to sketch his 

 portrait in the portfolio of my memory. He was a slightly-made 

 man, with a florid, hard-looking face, and closely-knit beetling 

 brows. A slight streak of whisker, as if accidentally left, 

 relieved the extreme baldness of the cheek, and I particularly 

 remarked that a mole, about the size of a pea, formed a distin- 

 guishing mark upon his chin. His dress appeared a decided 

 cross between a groom's and a quaker's. A low-cro^vned broad- 

 brimmed hat, inclined to the distinctive character of the latter, 

 and a rather narrow and flimsy white neckcloth presented an 

 adcUtional link of circumstantial evidence in support of this 

 division of his attire. The decided sporting, cut-away style of 

 his dark-green coat, however, tight-fitting light-gray trousers, 

 buttoned closely round the ankles of his boots, with long, 

 narrow straps passing under the soles, and buff waistcoat 

 rounded ofi" at the corners, presented all that unadulterated 

 stable taste, so frequently imitated with great success by 

 professors and masters of higher arts than belong to the horse 

 and his mysteries. 



After looking at me for some two or three minutes in un' 

 broken silence, but varying his position as he continued his 

 close and even minute examination, John Sellusall raised my 

 quarter-piece, for which liberty I lifted my near hind leg, and 



c 



