21 It. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



37 



CHAPTER virr. 



OLD TOM TOWLER. 



WtoiXF**- 



habiliments;. 



5=^® HERE are few more 

 difficult persons to 

 identify than a 

 huntsman in un- 

 dress, and of all 

 queer ones perhaps 

 old Tom Towler 

 was the queerest. 

 Tom in his person 

 furnished an apt 

 illustration of the 

 right appropriation 

 of talent and the 

 fitness of things, 

 for he would neither 

 have made a groom, 

 nor a coachman, nor 

 a postilion, nor a footman, nor a ploughman, nor a mechanic, nor 

 anything we know of, and yet he was first-rate as a huntsman. 

 He was too weak for a groom, too small for a coachman, too ugly 

 for a postilion, too stunted for a footman, too light for a plough- 

 man, too useless-looking for almost anything. 



Any one looking at him in " mufti " would exclaim, " what an 

 unfortunate ohject ! " and perhaps offer him a penny, while in his 

 hunting habiliments lords would hail him with, " Well, Tom, how 

 are you ?" and baronets ask him "how he was ? " Commoners 

 felt honoured by his countenance, and yet, but for hunting, Tom 

 would have been wasted — a cypher — an inapplicable sort of man. 

 Old Tom, in his scarlet coat, black cap, and boots, and Tom in his 

 undress — say, shirt-sleeves, shorts, grey stockings and shoes, bore 

 about the same resemblance to each other that a three months 

 dead jay nailed to a keeper's lodge bears to the bright-plumaged 

 bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry- 

 looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting 

 as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the 

 most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was 

 seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been scalped 

 by the branch of a tree, his nose knocked into a thing like a 

 button by the kick of a horse, his teeth sent down his throat by a 



