CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 2:3") 



kept the Captain going ever since. Of course he has had his 

 ■seasons of prosperity and depression ; but he has never been 

 seen either at the bilHard or card table, or in any gambling and 

 ready-money concern, without a well-displayed purse full of 

 sovereigns, or a stiff roll of notes, of which he seemed most 

 thoroughly careless. Indeed, it is in scenes such as these that 

 he chiefly shines, for it is much easier to affect the flash man 

 than the foxhunter. Well-made clothes, smart cravats, clean 

 gloves, good boots, are things of easy accomplishment ; but it 

 is difficult for the non-foxhunting man, at least for the man 

 who has no real taste that way, to pass muster among sports- 

 men. People soon see who come out for pleasure and who for 

 other purposes, though, as we said before, it is no small 

 recommendation to hunting that it is so little capable of 

 perversion to other than legitimate purposes. It may be 

 prejudice, and because we " know the man," but we cannot 

 help thinking there is something about Shabbyhounde's 

 appearance indicative of his calling, and different to other 

 people. His very clothes seem to tell his story. 



They have neither the neat appropriateness of the well 

 got-up sportsman, nor the indifference of the careless dresser. 

 There is a sort of attempt — a sort of shabby genteelishness 

 about them, unknown in the general run of hunt costume. 



Of course he rides in a cap. This he does for the sake of 

 identity, and in order that none of the hazardous leaps he 

 takes in the prosecution of his calling of horse-seller may be 

 appropriated by any one else. 



It is not a badly-shaped cap ; neither one of those ridiculous 

 sugar-loaf things we sometimes see sticking a mile ofi" a man's 

 head, nor one of the squash order, that look as if they only 

 want ears to turn down to make very comfortable travelling 

 ones, but it has the appearance of having been made by a 

 workman, and not of second-rate velvet either. This cap, 

 indeed, is the best thing about him ; but below it are a pair of 



