CHAPTER XLIII.
ANOTHER SICK HOST [Illustration: letter W] When Mr.Puffington read Messrs.

Sponge and Spraggon's account of the run with his hounds, in the Swillingford paper, he was perfectly horrified; words cannot describe the disgust that he felt.

It came upon him quite by surprise, for he expected to be immortalized in some paper or work of general circulation, in which the Lords Loosefish, Sir Toms, and Sir Harrys of former days might recognize the spirited doings of their early friend.
He wanted the superiority of his establishment, the excellence of his horses, the stoutness of his hounds, and the polish of his field, proclaimed, with perhaps a quiet cut at the Flat-Hat gentry; instead of which he had a mixed medley sort of a mess, whose humdrum monotony was only relieved by the absurdities and errors with which it was crammed.

At first, Mr.Puffington could not make out what it meant, whether it was a hoax for the purpose of turning run-writing into ridicule, or it had suffered mutilation at the hands of the printer.

Calling a good scent an exquisite perfume looked suspicious of a hoax, but then seasonal fox for seasoned fox, scorning to cry for scoring to cry, bay fox for bag fox, grunting for hunting, thrashing for trashing, rests for casts, and other absurdities, looked more like accident than design.
These are the sort of errors that non-sporting compositors might easily make, one term being as much like English to them as the other, though amazingly different to the eye or the ear of a sportsman.