Brentford.”  The hero of this pleasant horse-play was a tailor,—­men following that useful trade being considered capable of affording more amusement in connection with horses than any others, excepting, perhaps, jolly mariners on a spree.  The plot of the drama used to strike my young mind as being a “crib” from “John Gilpin”; but I forgave that, in consideration of the skilful manner in which the story was wrought out.  With what withering contempt used I, brought up among horses and their riders, to jeer at the wretched attempts of the tailor to remain permanently upon any central point of the horse’s spinal ridge!  How cheerful my feelings, when that man of shreds and patches fell prostrate in the sawdust, where he lay grovelling until the next revolution of his noble steed, when the animal caught him up by the baggiest portion of the trousers and carried him round the arena as a terrier might a rat!  But, oh, what mingled joy and admiration, when out from the worried mass of coats leaped the nimble rider, now no longer a miserable tailor, but a roseate young man in tights and spangles, featly posturing over all the available area of his steed, and “witching the world with noble horsemanship”!

All these memories crowded upon me with a tremendous shock the very first time I saw the name of William Button upon the dingy swinging sign.  Afterwards, when I became intimate with that curious person, I discovered that he was a capital “whip,”—­first-rate, indeed, as a driver of the fast trotting horse, as well as a good judge of that superior article.  With respect to his experiences as a rider he was more reserved; and it was not until after I had known him a long time that he confided to me the particulars of a ride once taken by him, which bore, in its principal features, a singular resemblance to the one performed by his great name-sake of the sawdust-ring.

There is a pack of fox-hounds kept at Montreal, maintained chiefly by officers of the garrison, as a shadowy reminiscence, perhaps, of the real thing, which is essentially of insular Britain and of nowhere else.  Button happened to go to Montreal, on one occasion, for the purpose of picking up a race-horse, I think, for the Quebec market.  Somebody who used to ride with the hounds had a horse which he wanted to get rid of, on account of headstrong tendencies in general and inability to appreciate the advantages of a bit.  I remember the animal well.  He was a fiery chestnut, with white about the legs, and very good across a country so long as he was wanted to go; but no common power could stop him when once he began to do that.  On this animal—­“The Buffer,” he was called—­Button was persuaded to mount, “just to try him a little,” his owner said; and by way of doing that with perfect freedom from restraint, they rode out to where the hounds were to throw off, a couple of miles from the city.  Button used to say that the term “throw off,” which was new to him in that application, haunted him