30 mil. sponge's sporting tour. 



A sudden turn of a long, gently-rising, but hitherto uninteresting 

 road, brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded, 

 beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures 

 are brightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing 

 through the centre of the vale. In the far distance, looking as though 

 close upon the blue hills, though in reality several miles apart, sundry 

 spires and taller buildings are seen rising above the gray mists towards 

 which a straight, undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing 

 up the right of the vale, directs the eye. This is the famed Laverick 

 Wells, the resort, as indeed all watering-places are, according to News- 

 paper accounts, of 



" Knights and dames, 

 And all that wealth and lofty lineage chum." 



At the period of which we write, however, " Laverick Wells" was 

 in great feather — it had never known such times. Every house, every 

 lodging, every hole and corner was full, and the great hotels, which 

 more resemble Lancashire cotton-mills than English hostelries, were 

 sending away applicants in the most off-hand, indifferent way. 



The Laverick Wells hounds had formerly been under the manage- 

 ment of the well-known Mr. Thomas Slocdolager, a hard-riding, hard- 

 bitten, hold-harding sort of sportsman, whose whole soul was in the 

 thing, and who would have ridden over his best friend in the ardor 

 of the chase. 



In some countries such a creature may be considered an acquisi- 

 tion, and so long as he reigned at the Wells, people made the best 

 they could of him, though it was painfully apparent to the livery- 

 stable keepers, and others, who had the best interest of the place at 

 heart, that such a red-faced, gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted 

 buffer, who would throw off at the right time, and who resolutely set 

 his great stubbly-cheeked face against all show meets and social in- 

 tercourse in the field, was not- exactly the man for a civilised place. 

 Whether time might have enlightened Mr. Slocdolager as to the fact, 

 that continuous killing of foxes, after fatiguingly long runs, was not 

 the way to the hearts of the Laverick Wells sportsmen, is unknown, 

 for on attempting to realise as fine a subscription as ever appeared 

 upon paper, it melted so in the process of collection, that what was 

 realised was hardly worth his acceptance; so saying, in his usual 

 blunt way, that if he hunted a country at his own expense he would 

 hunt one that wasn't encumbered with fools, he just stamped his little 

 wardrobe into a pair of old black saddle-bags, and rode out of town 

 without saying " tar, tar," good-bye, carding, or P. P. C.-ing anybody. 



This was at the end of a season, a circumstance that considerably 

 mitigated the inconvenience so abrupt a departure might have occa- 

 sioned, and as one of the great beauties of Laverick Wells is, that it 

 is just as much in vogue in summer as in winter, the inhabitants con- 



