4 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



fied every clay by our friends the Quakers, who adorn their beautiful 

 brown Saxony coats with little inside velvet collars and fancy silk 

 buttons, and even the severe order of sporting costume adopted by 

 our friend Mr. Sponge, is not devoid of capability in the way of 

 tasteful adaptation. This Mr. Sponge chiefly showed in promoting 

 a resemblance between his neckcloths and waistcoats. Thus, if he 

 wore a cream-coloured cravat, he would have a buff- coloured 

 waistcoat, if a striped waistcoat, then the starcher would be 

 imbued with somewhat of the same colour and pattern. The ties 

 of these varied with their texture. The silk ones terminated in a 

 sort of coaching fold, and were secured by a golden fox-head pin, 

 while the striped starchers, with the aid of a pin on each side, just 

 made a neat, unpretending tie in the middle, a sort of miniature of 

 the flagrant, flyaway, Mile-End ones of aspiring youth of the 

 present day. His coats were of the single-breasted cut-away order, 

 with pockets outside, and generally either Oxford mixture or some 

 dark colour, that required you to place him in a favourable light 

 to say what it was. 



His waistcoats, of course, were of the most correct form and 

 material, generally either pale buff, or buff with a narrow stripe, 

 similar to the undress vests of the servants of the Royal Family, 

 only with the pattern run across instead of lengthways, as those 

 worthies mostly have theirs, and made with good honest step 

 collars, instead of the make-believe roll collars they sometimes con- 

 vert their upright ones into. When in deep thought, calculating, 

 perhaps, the value of a passing horse, or considering whether he 

 should have beefsteaks or lamb chops for dinner, Sponge's thumbs 

 would rest in the arm-holes of his waistcoat ; in which easy, but 

 not very elegant, attitude, he Avould sometimes stand until all 

 trace of the idea that elevated them had passed away from his mind. 



In the trouser line he adhered to the close-fitting costume of 

 former days ; and many were the trials, the easings, and the 

 alterings, ere he got a pair exactly to his mind. Many were the 

 customers who turned away on seeing his manly figure filling the 

 swing mirror in " Snip and Sneiders','' a monopoly that some 

 tradesmen might object to, only Mr. Sponge's trousers being 

 admitted to be perfect " triumphs of the art," the more such a walk- 

 ing advertisement was seen in the shop the better. Indeed, we be- 

 lieve it would have been worth Snip and Co.'s while to have let him 

 have them for nothing. They were easy without being tight, or 

 rather they looked tight without being so ; there wasn't a bag, a 

 wrinkle, or a crease that there shouldn't be, and strong and storm- 

 defying as they seemed, they were yet as soft and as supple as a lady's 

 glove. They looked more as if his legs had been blown in them 

 than as if such irreproachable garments were the work of man's 

 hands. Many were the nudges, and many the " look at this 



