practised eye is not to be imposed upon either by
the blandishments of the bang-tail, or the bereavements of the dock.
Tattersall will hail him from his rostrum with--'Here's a horse will suit
you, Mr. Sponge! cheap, good, and handsome! come and buy him.' But it is
needless describing him here, for every out-of-place groom and
dog-stealer's man knows him by sight.

CHAPTER II

MR. BENJAMIN BUCKRAM

Having dressed and sufficiently described our hero to enable our readers to
form a general idea of the man, we have now to request them to return to
the day of our introduction. Mr. Sponge had gone along Oxford Street at a
somewhat improved pace to his usual wont--had paused for a shorter period
in the ''bus' perplexed 'Circus,' and pulled up seldomer than usual between
the Circus and the limits of his stroll. Behold him now at the Edgeware
Road end, eyeing the 'buses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the
contemptuous sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions.
Red, green blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled,
and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and nodded,
and smiled, and slanged, but Mr. Sponge regarded them not. He had a sort of
''bus' panorama in his head, knew the run of them all, whence they started,
where they stopped, where they watered, where they changed, and, wonderful
to relate, had never been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to
take a threepenny one. In cab and ''bus' geography there is not a more
learned man in London.

Mark him as he stands at the corner. He sees what he wants, it's the
chequered one with the red and blue wheels that the Bayswater ones have got
between them, and that the St. John's Wood and two Western Railway ones are
trying to get into trouble by crossing. What a row! how the ruffians whip,
and stamp, and storm, and all but pick each other's horses' teeth with
their poles, how the cads gesticulate, and the passengers imprecate! now
the bonnets are out of the windows, and the row increases. Six coachmen
cutting and storming, six cads sawing the air, sixteen ladies in flowers
screaming, six-and-twenty sturdy passengers swearing they will 'fine them
all,' and Mr. Sponge is the only cool person in the scene. He doesn't rush
into the throng and 'jump in,' for fear the 'bus should extricate itself
and drive on without him; he doesn't make confusion worse confounded by
intimating his behest; he doesn