After the diversions of the day were over, my friend introduced me to the genius of the place, a small man of about five feet high, with a very sharp countenance, and dressed in a brown jockey coat and top boots.  ‘Joey,’ said he, ‘this is a friend of mine.’  Joey nodded to me with a patronising air.  ‘Glad to see you, sir!—­want a dog?’

‘No,’ said I.

‘You have got one, then—­want to match him?’

‘We have a dog at home,’ said I, ’in the country; but I can’t say I should like to match him.  Indeed, I do not like dog-fighting.’

‘Not like dog-fighting!’ said the man, staring.

‘The truth is, Joe, that he is just come to town.’

‘So I should think; he looks rather green—­not like dog-fighting!’

‘Nothing like it, is there, Joey?’

’I should think not; what is like it?  A time will come, and that speedily, when folks will give up everything else, and follow dog-fighting.’

‘Do you think so?’ said I.

‘Think so?  Let me ask what there is that a man wouldn’t give up for it?’

‘Why,’ said I, modestly, ‘there’s religion.’

’Religion!  How you talk.  Why, there’s myself bred and born an Independent, and intended to be a preacher, didn’t I give up religion for dog-fighting?  Religion, indeed!  If it were not for the rascally law, my pit would fill better on Sundays than any other time.  Who would go to church when they could come to my pit?  Religion! why, the parsons themselves come to my pit; and I have now a letter in my pocket from one of them, asking me to send him a dog.’

‘Well, then, politics,’ said I.

’Politics!  Why, the gemmen in the House would leave Pitt himself, if he were alive, to come to my pit.  There were three of the best of them here to-night, all great horators.—­Get on with you, what comes next?’

‘Why, there’s learning and letters.’

’Pretty things, truly, to keep people from dog-fighting.  Why, there’s the young gentlemen from the Abbey School comes here in shoals, leaving books, and letters, and masters too.  To tell you the truth, I rather wish they would mind their letters, for a more precious set of young blackguards I never seed.  It was only the other day I was thinking of calling in a constable for my own protection, for I thought my pit would have been torn down by them.’

Scarcely knowing what to say, I made an observation at random.  ’You show, by your own conduct,’ said I, ’that there are other things worth following besides dog-fighting.  You practise rat-catching and badger-baiting as well.’

The dog-fancier eyed me with supreme contempt.

‘Your friend here,’ said he, ’might well call you a new one.  When I talks of dog-fighting, I of course means rat-catching, and badger-baiting, ay, and bull-baiting too, just as when I speaks religiously, when I says one I means not one but three.  And talking of religion puts me in mind that I have something else to do besides chaffing here, having a batch of dogs to send off by this night’s packet to the Pope of Rome.’