MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 3 



marred by a jerky, twitchy, uneasy sort of air, that too plainly 

 showed he was not the natural, or what the lower orders call the 

 real gentleman. Not that Sponge was shy. Far from it. He 

 never hesitated about offering to a lady, after a three days' 

 acquaintance, or in asking a gentleman to take him a h.rse in 

 over-night, with whom he might chance to come in contact in the 

 hunting-field. And he did it all in such a cool, off-hand, matter- 

 of-course sort of way, that people who would have stared with 

 astonishment if anybody else had hinted at such a proposal, really 

 seemed to come into the humour and spirit of the thing, and to 

 look upon it rather as a matter of course than otherwise. Then 

 his dexterity in getting into people's houses was only equalled by 

 the difficulty of getting him out again, but this we must waive 

 for the present in favour of his portraiture. 



In height, Mr. Sponge was about the middle size — five feet 

 eleven or so — with a well borne up, not badly shaped, closely 

 cropped oval head, a tolerably good, but somewhat receding fore- 

 head, bright hazel eyes, Roman nose, with carefully tended whiskers, 

 reaching the corners of a well-formed mouth, and thence descending 

 in semicircles into a vast expanse of hair beneath the chin. 



Having mentioned Mr. Sponge's groomy gait and horsey 

 propensities, it were almost needless to say, that his dress was in 

 the sporting style — you saw what he was by his clothes. Every 

 article seemed to be made to defy the utmost rigour of the 

 elements. His hat (Lincoln and Bennett) was hard and heavy. 

 It sounded upon an entrance-hall table like a drum. A little 

 magical loop in the lining explained the cause of its weight. 

 Somehow, his hats were never either old or new — not that he 

 bought them second-hand, but when he bought a new one he 

 took its "long-coat" off, as he called it, with a singeing lamp, and 

 made it look as if it had undergone a few probationary showers. 



When a good London hat recedes to a certain point, it gets 

 no worse ; it is not like a country-made thing that keeps 

 going and going until it declines into a thing with no sort of 

 resemblance to its original self. Barring its weight and hardness, 

 the Sponge hat had no particular character apart from the Sponge 

 head. It was not one of those punty ovals or Cheshire-cheese flats, 

 or curly-sided things that enables one to say who is in a house and 

 who is not, by a glance at the hats in the entrance, but it was 

 just a quiet, round hat, without anything remarkable, either in the 

 binding, the lining, or the band, still it was a very becoming hat 

 when Sponge had it on. There is a great deal of character in 

 hats. "We have seen kats that bring the owners to the ree<Jlection 

 far more forcibly than the generality of portraits. But to our 

 hero. 

 That there may be a dandified simplicity in dress, is exempli 



