sufficient consciousness to abandon the sponge.

And then, to my chapfallen disappointment, the Chairman announced that
he was very sorry and could not help it, but that was the concluding box
of the evening.

I will reluctantly confess that, on the whole, I found the proceedings
lacking in sensationality, since they were of very limited duration, and
totally devoid of bloodshed, or any danger to the life and limb of the
performers. For it is not reasonably possible for a combatant to make a
palpable hit when his hands are, as it were, muzzled, being cabined,
cribbed, and confined in padded soft gloves. I am not a squeamish in
such cases, and I must respectfully submit that the Cause of True Sport
can only be hampered by such nursery and puerile restrictions, for none
can expect to compound an omelette without the fracture of eggs.

Upon remarking as above to my young lively friend, he assured me that
even a gloved hand was competent to produce facial disfigurement and tap
the vital fluid, and offered to demonstrate the truth of his statement
if I would be the partaker with him in a glove-box.

But, though doubting the authenticity of his assertions, I thought it
prudential to decline the proof of the pudding, and so took a
precipitate leave of him with profuse thanks for his unparagoned
kindness, and many promises to put on the gloves with him at the first
convenient opportunity.

XI

_Mr Jabberjee finds himself in a position of extreme delicacy._

It is an indubitable fact that the discovery of steam is the most
marvellous invention of the century. For had it been predicted
beforehand that innumerable millions of human beings would be
transported with security at a headlong speed for hundreds of miles
along a ferruginous track, the most temporary deviation from which would
produce the inevitable cataclysm and no end of a smash, the working
majority would have expressed their candid opinion of such rhodomontade
by cocking the contemptuous snook of incredulity.

And yet it is now the highly accomplished fact and matter of course!

Still, I shall venture to express the opinion that the pleasurability of
such railway journeys is largely dependent upon the person who may be
our travelling companion, and that some of the companies are not quite
careful enough in the exclusion of undesirable fellow-passengers. In
proof of which I now beg to submit an exemplary instance from personal
experience.

I was r