We do not profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same sort
of Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust we have given such a general
outline of style, and indication of character, as an ordinary knowledge of
the world will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy sort
of man, wishing to be a gentleman without knowing how.

Far more difficult is the task of conveying to our readers such information
as will enable them to form an idea of our hero's ways and means. An
accommodating world--especially the female portion of it--generally
attribute ruin to the racer, and fortune to the fox-hunter; but though Mr.
Sponge's large losses on the turf, as detailed by him to Mr. Buckram on the
occasion of their deal or 'job,' would bring him in the category of the
unfortunates; still that representation was nearly, if not altogether,
fabulous. That Mr. Sponge might have lost a trifle on the great races of
the year, we don't mean to deny, but that he lost such a sum as eighteen
hundred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, we are in a condition to
contradict, for the best of all possible reasons, that he hadn't it to
lose. At the same time we do not mean to attribute falsehood to Mr.
Sponge--quite the contrary--it is no uncommon thing for merchants and
traders--men who 'talk in thousands,' to declare that they lost twenty
thousand by this, or forty thousand by that, simply meaning that they
didn't make it, and if Mr. Sponge, by taking the longest of the long odds
against the most wretched of the outsiders, might have won the sums he
named, he surely had a right to say he lost them when he didn't get them.

It never does to be indigenously poor, if we may use such a term, and when
a man gets to the end of his tether, he must have something or somebody to
blame rather than his own extravagance or imprudence, and if there is no
'rascally lawyer' who has bolted with his title-deeds, or fraudulent agent
who has misappropriated his funds, why then, railroads, or losses on the