MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 19 



entwined brick-houses, with small, flat, pan-tiled roofs, and lattice- 

 windows ; and, hard by, a large hay-stack, three times the size of the 

 house, or a desolate barn, half as big as all the rest of the buildings. 

 From the smallness of the holdings, the farm-houses are dotted about 

 as thickly, and at such varying distances from the roads, as to look 

 like inferior " villas" falling out of rank ; most of them have a half- 

 smart, half-seedy sort of look. 



The rustics who cultivate them, or rather look after them, are 

 neither exactly town nor country. They have the clownish dress 

 and boorish gait of the regular " chaws," with a good deal of the 

 quick, suspicious, sour sauciness of the low London resident. If you 

 can get an answer from them at all, it is generally delivered in such 

 a way as to show that the answerer thinks you are what they call 

 " chaffing them," asking them what you know. 



These farms serve the double purpose of purveyors to the London 

 stables, and hospitals for sick, overworked, or unsaleable horses. All 

 the great job-masters and horse-dealers have these retreats in the 

 country, and the smaller ones pretend to have, from whence, in due 

 course, they can draw any sort of an animal a customer may want, 

 just as little cellarless wine-merchants can get you any sort of wine 

 from real establishments — if you only give them time. 



There was a good deal of mystery about Scampley. It was some- 

 times in the hands of Mr. Benjamin Buckram, sometimes in the 

 hands of his assignees, sometimes in those of his cousin Abraham 

 Brown, and sometimes John Doe and Ilichard Boe were the occu- 

 pants of it. 



Mr. Benjamin Buckram, though very far from being one, had the 

 advantage of looking like a respectable man. There was a certain 

 plump, well-fed rosiness about him, which, aided by a bright-coloured 

 dress, joined to a continual fumble in the pockets of his drab trousers, 

 gave him the air of a " weil-to-do-in- the- world " sort of man. Moreover, 

 he sported a velvet collar to his blue coat, a more imposing ornament 

 than it appears at first sight. To be sure, there are two sorts of velvet 

 collars — the legitimate velvet collar, commencing with the coat, and 

 the adopted velvet collar, put on when the cloth one gets shabby. 



Buckram's was always the legitimate velvet collar, new from the 

 first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in 

 storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the 

 world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and 

 we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimised 

 by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibit- 

 ing that spurious sign of gentility — a horse and gig. 



The reader will now have the kindness to consider Mr. Sponge 

 arriving at Scampley. 



" Ah, Mr. Sponge ! " exclaimed Mr. Buckram, who, having seen 

 our friend advancing up the little twisting approach from the road to 



