210 ME. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



man. On the contrary, he was naturally a nice, steady young 

 man ; and only indulged in the vagaries we have described 

 because they were indulged in by the high-born and gay. 



Tom and Jerry had a great deal to answer for in the way of 

 leading soft-headed young men astray ; and old Puffington having 

 had the misfortune to christen our friend " Thomas," of course his 

 companions dubbed him " Corinthian Tom ; " by which name he 

 has been known ever since. 



A man of such undoubted wealth could not be otherwise than a 

 great favourite with the fair, and innumerable were the invitations 

 that poured into his chambers in the Albany — dinner parties, 

 evening parties, balls, concerts, bones for the opera ; and as each 

 succeeding season drew to a close, invitations to those last efforts 

 of the desperate, boating and whitebait parties. 



Corinthian Tom went to them all — at least, to as many as he 

 could manage — always dressing in the most exemplary way, as 

 though he had been asked to show his fine clothes instead of to 

 make love to the ladies. Manifold were the hopes and expecta- 

 tions that he raised. Puff could not understand that, though it ia 

 all very well to be " an am««zin instance of a pop'lar man " with 

 the men, that the same sort of thing does not do with the ladies. 



We have heard that there were six mammas, bowling about in 

 their barouches, at the close of his second season, innuendoing, 

 nodding, and hinting to their friends, "that, &c," when there 

 wasn't one of their daughters who had penetrated the rhinoceros- 

 like hide of his own conceit. The consequence was, that all these 

 ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and connections of this 

 life, thought it incumbent upon them to " blow " our friend Puff 

 — proclaim how infamously he had behaved — all because he had 

 danced three supper dances with one girl ; brought another a fine 

 bouquet from Covent Garden ; and walked a third away from her 

 party at a pic-nic at Erith ; begged the mamma of a fourth to take 

 her to a Woolwich ball ; sent a fifth a ticket for a Toxophilite 

 meeting ; and dangled about the carriage of the sixth at a review 

 at the Scrubbs. Poor Puff never thought of being more than an 

 amaaz'm instance of a pop'lar man ! 



Not that the ladies' denunciations did the Corinthian any harm 

 at first — old ladies know each other better than that .- and each 

 new mamma had no doubt but Mrs. Depecarde or Mrs. Main- 

 chance, as the case might be, had been deceiving herself — " was 

 always doing so, indeed ; her ugly girls were not likely to attract 

 any one — certainly not such an elegant man as Corinthian Tom." 



But as season after season passed away, and the Corinthian still 

 played the old game — still went the old rounds — the dinner and 

 ball invitations gradually dwindled away, till he became a mere 

 stop-gap at the one, and a landing-place appendage at the other. 



