disdained to talk about a subscription, and boldly took the hounds as his
own. He then became a very important personage at Laverick Wells.

He had always been a most important personage among the ladies, but as the
men couldn't marry him, those who didn't want to borrow money of him, of
course, ran him down. It used to be, 'Look at that dandified ass, Waffles,
I declare the sight of him makes me sick'; or, 'What a barber's apprentice
that fellow is, with his ringlets all smeared with Macassar.'

Now it was Waffles this, Waffles that, 'Who dines with Waffles?' 'Waffles
is the best fellow under the sun! By Jingo, I know no such man as Waffles!'
'_Most deserving_ young man!'

In arriving at this conclusion, their judgement was greatly assisted by the
magnificent way he went to work. Old Tom Towler, the whip, who had toiled
at his calling for twenty long years on fifty pounds and what he could
'pick up,' was advanced to a hundred and fifty, with a couple of men under
him. Instead of riding worn-out, tumble-down, twenty-pound screws, he was
mounted on hundred-guinea horses, for which the dealers were to have a
couple of hundred, _when they were paid_. Everything was in the same
proportion.

Mr. Waffles' succession to the hunt made a great commotion among the
fair--many elegant and interesting young ladies, who had been going on the
pious tack against the Reverend Solomon Winkeyes, the popular bachelor
preacher of St. Margaret's, teaching in his schools, distributing his
tracts, and collecting the penny subscriptions for his clothing club, now
took to riding in fan-tailed habits and feathered hats, and talking about
leaping and hunting, and riding over rails. Mr. Waffles had a pound of
hat-strings sent him in a week, and muffatees innumerable. Some, we are