210 mr. sponge's sporting tour. 



Reynard's and the Duke of Downeybird's among others. He had 

 never been able to keep any beyond his third season, his sauce or his 

 science being always greater than the sport he showed. Still he kept 

 up appearances, and was nothing daunted, it being a maxim of his, 

 that " as one door closed another opened." 



Mr. Puffington's was the door that now opened for him. 



What greater humiliation can a free-born Briton be subjected to 

 than paying a man eighty or a hundred pounds a-year, and finding 

 him house, coals, and candles, and perhaps a cow, to be his master ? 



Such was the case with poor Mr. Puffington, and such we grieve 

 to say, is the case with nine-tenths of the men who keep hounds ; 

 with all, indeed, save those who can hunt themselves, or who are 

 blessed with an aspiring whip, ready to step into the huntsman's 

 boots if he seems inclined to put them off in the field. How many 

 portly butlers are kept in subjection by having a footman ready to 

 supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack, however, the 

 huntsman's is the most difficult one to play. A man may say, " I'm 

 dim'd if I won't clean my own boots or my own horse, before I'll put 

 up with such a fellow's impudence; " but ^hen it comes to hunting 

 his own hounds, it is quite another pair of shoes, as Mr. Bragg would 

 say. 



Mr. Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff; as regularly 

 as a policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows the 

 sort of feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, or any 

 one whom we have called in to assist, takes the initiative, and treats 

 one as a nonenity, pooh-poohing all one's pet ideas, and upsetting all 

 one's well-considered arrangements. 



Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff 

 accordingly. If a " perfect servant " is only to be got out of the 

 establishments of the great, Mr. Bragg might be looked upon as a 

 paragon of perfection, and now combined in his own person all the 

 bad practices of all the places he had been in. Having " accepted 

 Mr. Puffington's situation," as the elegant phraseology of servitude 

 goes, he considered that Mr. Puffington had nothing more to do with 

 the hounds, and that any interference in "his department " was a 

 piece of impertinence. Puffington felt like a man who had bought 

 a good horse, but which he finds on riding is rather more of a horse 

 than he likes. He had no doubt that Bragg was a good man, but he 

 thought he was rather more of a gentleman than he required. On 

 the other hand, Mr. Bragg's opinion of his master may be gleaned 

 from the following letter which he wrote to his successor, Mr. Brick, 

 at Lord Reynard's : — 



" Ilanby House, Swillingford. 



" Dear Brick, 



" If your old man is done darning with your draft, I should 

 like to have the pick of it. I'm with one Mr. Puffington, a city gent. 



