WEEK AT MARKET HARBOROUGH 65 



altered his views about this later on, and he had no 

 taste for the water-jumping which he understood to 

 be necessary in Warwickshire. 



Still, there was Melton, but " I am not such a fool 

 as I look," quoth Mr. Sawyer, " and I don't mean to 

 keep eight hunters and a couple of hacks to meet a 

 set of fellows every day who don't condescend to 

 notice me unless I do as they do." Melton society 

 was indeed most exclusive in those, as in earlier, days, 

 for we recollect how Nimrod dwells on the habit of 

 " quizzing a slow top," which was, according to him, 

 one of the favourite sports of Lords Alvanley and 

 Forester, and the pleasant playful way of speaking 

 of unknown men as " Snobs," much as the Greeks 

 in the past, and the French people of to-day, love 

 to speak and think of all other nations as " barbarians." 

 " Whist," goes on Mr. Sawyer — he would speak of 

 Bridge to-day — "and dry Champagne and off to 

 London at the first appearance of frost, ride like a 

 butcher all day risking thrice as much neck as I do 

 here, and then come out ' quite the lady ' at dinner 

 time. . . . Besides Pd never sell my horses there. 

 They order their hunters down from London just as 

 they do their baccy and their breeches." Then it 

 was that Market Harborough came into his mind, 

 and he took the momentous resolution already quoted. 



Another author, Nim South, who made a hunting 

 tour in imitation of Nimrod, written with a faint 

 flavour of the great writer's peculiar style, gives his 

 ideas of Market Harborough. " It stands," he tells 

 us, " on the confines of Leicestershire and North- 

 amptonshire about eighty-three miles from London 

 on the mail road, and contains a good wide street 

 with a few barbers' poles sticking out, a Town Hall 

 and a large Church." This is a true, but very in- 



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