46 TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



THE HARD-UP. 



A RATIONAL EVENING'S AMUSEMENT. 



One hears of so many different notions of liard-up, that 

 it is difficult to say when you are or when you are not. 

 This man is dreadfully hard-up with an over-bodied 

 establishment and a three-thousand poimds butcher's bill ; 

 that one with a washerwoman's monthly reckoning and 

 unrepaired boot-leather. Here is a poor fellow fearfully 

 hard-up for something* to do • there another equally so for 

 somebody to be done ; a tliird owns to be hard-up for 

 somewhere to go ; a fourth yet more so for something to 

 go on. People, in short, are hard-up in most forms, and 

 rarely with grateful stomachs, saving only the philo- 

 sopher who cheerfully declared that he never felt 

 down in the world, as he was always so very hard-up 

 in it. 



But let us look for a case or two in point, and let our 

 iirst draw be over a bit of dinner. To achieve this, let 

 us further lose ourselves in trying a new cut from Covent 

 Garden to Piccadilly, and we may so, very likely, come 

 to anchor at a demi-semi-English-French house that you 

 could never have found by any other contrivance. We 

 don't mean, mind, any popular well-known resort of Mon- 

 sieur himself, w^here, with a wonderful foreknowledge of 

 your coming and choice, they have everything cooked 

 and kept hot for you two days at least before you arrive. 



