MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 17 



the dock. Tattersall will hail him from his rostrum with — " Here's 

 a horse will suit you, Mr. Sponge ! cheap, good, and handsome ! 

 come and buy him." But it is needless describing him here, for 

 every out-of-place groom and dog-stealer's man knows him by sight. 



CHAPTER II. 



MR. BENJAMIN BUCKRAM. 



Having dressed and sufficiently described our hero, to enable our 

 readers to form a general idea of the man, we have now to request 

 them to return to the day of our introduction. Mr. Sponge had gone 

 along Oxford Street at a somewhat improved pace to his usual wont 

 — had paused for a shorter period in the " 'bus" perplexed " Circus," 

 and pulled up seldomer than usual between the Circus and the limits 

 of his stroll. Behold him now at the Edgeware road end, eyeing the 

 'busses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the contemptuous 

 sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions. Bed, 

 green, blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled, 

 and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and 

 nodded, and smiled, and slanged, but Mr. Sponge regarded them not. 

 He had a sort of '"bus" panorama in his head, knew the run of 

 them all, whence they started, where they stopped, where they 

 watered, where they changed, and, wonderful to relate, had never 

 been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to take a three- 

 penny one. In cab and "'bus" geography there is not a more 

 learned man in London. 



Mark him as he stands at the corner. He sees what he wants, it's 

 the chequered one with the red and blue wheels that the Bayswater 

 or.es have got between them, and that the St. John's Wood and two 

 Western Railway ones are trying to get into trouble by crossing. 

 What a row ! how the ruffians whip, and stamp, and storm, and all 

 but pick each other's horses' teeth with their poles, how the cads ges- 

 ticulate, and the passengers imprecate ! now the bonnets are out of 

 the windows, and the row increases. Six coachmen cutting and 

 storming, six cads sawing the air, sixteen ladies in flowers screaming, 

 six-and-twenty sturdy passengers swearing they will " fine them all," 

 and Mr. Sponge is the only cool person in the scene. He doesn't 

 rush into the throng and " jump in," for fear the 'bus should extricate 

 itself and drive on without him ; he doesn't make confusion worse 

 confounded by intimating his behest; he doesn't soil his bright boots 

 by stepping off the curb-stone ; but, quietly waiting the evaporation 



