CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 233 



The hero whose name we have placed at the head of this 

 paper, and who is just now entering our hunting field, is an 

 admirable sample of the tribe we have been describing — a 

 gentleman horse-dealer. Captain Shabbyhounde is a man who 

 lives by his wits, and is what is generally called, " up to every- 

 thing." He can ride a race, ditto a steeple-chase, play 

 billiards, ditto rackets (which by the way he studied in Denman 

 Lodge, as they call the Bench), buy a horse, sell a screw, 

 measure twelve paces, cut the cards, row a match, shoot a 

 ditto, and take the part of a walking gentleman in private 

 theatricals. 



Forty years, five-and-twenty of which have been spent in 

 elbowing, and active intercourse with the world, have tended to 

 polish Shabbyhounde's wits up until he is as keen as a razor. 

 There are few things that he is not up to, or had a turn at, 

 though if his habits have acquired any settled direction it will 

 be for race and steeple-chase riding, billiard playing, and horse- 

 dealing. Hunting, it will be seen, we have not enumerated in 

 the catalogue of the Captain's accomplishments, for to tell the 

 truth, he only hunts as an auxiliary to horse-dealing, and we are 

 not desirous of enrolling such a character among its legitimate 

 followers. The Captain's season is summer, or perhaps spring 

 and summer, when the silk jacket and doeskins are in vogue. 



Captain Shabbyhounde has a taste for horses, but it is not 

 the taste of a sportsman — a taste that amounts almost to affec- 

 tion for an animal that pleases him ; for Captain Shabbyhounde 

 would sell anything he has — his own father if he could get any- 

 thing for him — and his taste amounts to a sort of enterprising 

 dabbling in an interesting article that brings him in money. He 

 is a good judge of horses, and a good judge of what they can do, 

 and has a turn for cobbling them up, and passing infirm ones 

 off as sound. Hunting, of course, favours this sort of dealing, for 

 as the Captain only professes to deliver them sound, if they break 

 down on the second or third day, he shifts any blame from 



