Nevertheless, much as I sympathise in his bride’s consternation, I cannot deny a fellow-feeling with that bridegroom of whom it is related that, on a wedding-trip of many hours by the side of his late-won treasure, during which he ceased not to scan the adjacent fences with a practical eye, he uttered never a word during the entire journey, save this one remarkable sentence, “There’s my place! Where would _you_ have it?”
Some such ruminations as the above probably engrossed the whole of my friend’s intellects, till the courteous offer of _Punch_—containing, as usual, one of Leech’s inimitable hunting sketches—drew his attention to his fellow-traveller, under whose multiplicity of wrappers he had no difficulty in recognising the placid features of the gentleman he had that morning noticed in the boot-shop. It was, indeed, none other than the Honourable Crasher; by this time completely worn out, and who, to do him justice, was a gentlemanlike, well-featured fellow enough, if he had not always looked so dreadfully tired.
The reply to such a courtesy, where there were no ladies in the carriage, could only be, “Have you any objection to smoking?” And as nobody ever _does_ object nowadays to that soothing practice, and the “forty-shilling penalty” is, I trust, simply a dead-letter and a fallacy, the Laranagas were produced, and a couple of them soon got very freely under way.
No introduction from a mutual friend is equal to that of a cigar. Any two votaries of the “pleasant vice,” at least during the time they are engaged in its practice, are sure to fraternise, and in five minutes Mr. Sawyer and the Honourable Crasher were hard at it, I need scarcely observe, on the subject of fox-hunting; the former resolving, as far as possible, to pick the brains of his new acquaintance (if he could find them) on that exhaustless topic; the latter positively warming into a languid enthusiasm on the only subject to which he could direct his whole attention for ten consecutive minutes.
Racing men are bad enough. Politicians are sufficiently long-winded. A couple of agriculturists will keep the ball rolling pretty perseveringly on the congenial themes of “cake,” mangold wurzel, short-horns, reaping-machines, and guano; but I have heard ladies, who are perhaps the best judges of volubility, affirm that, for energy, duration, and the faculty of saying the same thing over and over again, a dialogue between a couple of fox-hunters beats every other kind of discussion completely out of the field.