206 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



new man in the county, he thought that taking them would make 

 him popular, and give him standing. He had no natural inclina- 

 tion for hunting, but seeing friends who had no taste for the turf 

 take upon themselves the responsibility of stewardships, he saw no 

 reason why he should not make a similar sacrifice at the shrine of 

 Diana. Indeed, Puff was not bred for a sportsman. His father, 

 a most estimable man, and one with whom we have spent many a 

 convivial evening, was a great starchmaker at Stepney ; and his 

 mother was the daughter of an eminent Worcestershire stone-china 

 maker. Save such ludicrous hunts as they might have seen on 

 their brown jugs, we do not believe either of them had any 

 acquaintance whatever with the chase. Old Puffington was, 

 however, what a wise heir esteems a great deal more — an excellent 

 man of business, and amassed mountains of money. To see his 

 establishment at Stepney, one would think the whole world was 

 going to be starched. Enormous dock-tailed dray-horses emerged 

 with ponderous waggons heaped up to the very skies, while 

 others would come rumbling in, laden with wheat, potatoes, 

 and other starch-making ingredients. Puffington's blue roans 

 were well known about town, and were considered the handsomest 

 horses of the day ; quite equal to Barclay and Perkins's pie- 

 balds. 



Old Puffington was not like a sportsman. He was a little, soft, 

 rosy, round-about man, with stiff resolute legs that did not look as 

 if they could be bent to a saddle. He was great, however, in a 

 gig, and slouched like a sack. 



Mrs. Puffington, ne Smith, was a tall handsome woman, who 

 thought a good deal of herself. When she and her spouse married, 

 they lived close to the manufactory, in a sweet little villa replete 

 with every elegance and convenience — a pond, which they called a 

 lake — laburnums without end ; a yew, clipped into a dock-tailed 

 waggon horse ; standing for three horses and gigs, with an acre 

 and a half of land for a cow. 



Old Puffington, however, being unable to keep those dearest 

 documents of a British merchant, his balance-sheets, to himself, 

 and Mrs. Puffington finding a considerable sum going to the 

 "good" every year, insisted, on the birth of their only child, our 

 friend, upon migrating to the " west," as she called it, and at one 

 bold stroke they established themselves in Heathcote-street, 

 Mecklenburgh-square. Novelists had not then written this part 

 down as " Mesopotamia," and it was quite as genteel as Harley or 

 Wimpole-street are now. Their chief object then was to increase 

 their wealth and make their only son " a gentleman." They sent 

 him to Eton, and in due time to Christ Church, where, of course, 

 he established a red coat, to persecute Sir Thomas Mostyn's and 

 the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, much to the annoyance of their 



