with the democratic forces?  The huge butcher, fifteen stone,—­two hundred and ten pounds,—­good weight,—­steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant.  No words from Harry, the Baltimorean,—­one of the quiet sort, who strike first, and do the talking, if there is any, afterwards.  No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—­followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order, and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dismiss the ring with a benediction.

I can’t help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it is the most wanton and irrelevant digression.  But all of us have a little speck of fight underneath our peace and goodwill to men,—­just a speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, you know,—­so that we should not submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled aggressor that came along.  You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer’s invention.  See whether this sounds true or not.

Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and Scrab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking of.  With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in English stables, when he rubbed down the silken-skinned racers, in great perfection.  After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and some of the companies were on the village-common, there was still some skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken out of them.  The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out somebody.  So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and, in brief, emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate any classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate for his attentions.  I don’t suppose there were many of the college boys that would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know so much more of than Americans, for the most part.  However, one of the Sophomores, a very quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he stood there, sparring away, struck him with the sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had been with his fist,—­and knocked him heels over head and senseless, so that he had to be carried off from the field.  This ugly way of hitting is the great trick of the French savate, which is not commonly thought able to stand its ground against English pugilistic science.—­These are old recollections, with not much to recommend them, except, perhaps, a dash of life, which may be worth a little something.