nour of a private interview at Lord Chester's first
convenience.

His lordship bowed, with an odd mixture of the civility of a jockey
and the hauteur of a head groom of the stud, and led the way to a small
apartment, which I afterwards discovered he called his own. (I never
could make out, by the way, why, in England, the very worst room in the
house is always appropriated to the master of it, and dignified by the
appellation of "the gentleman's own.") I gave the Newmarket grandee the
letter intended for him, and quietly seating myself, awaited the result.

He read it through slowly and silently, and then taking out a huge
pocket-book, full of racing bets, horses' ages, jockey opinions,
and such like memoranda, he placed it with much solemnity among this
dignified company, and then said, with a cold, but would-be courteous
air, "My friend, Lord Dawton, says you are entirely in his confidence
Mr. Pelham. I hope you will honour me with your company at Chester Park
for two or three days, during which time I shall have leisure to reply
to Lord Dawton's letter. Will you take some refreshment?"

I answered the first sentence in the affirmative, and the latter in the
negative; and Lord Chester thinking it perfectly unnecessary to trouble
himself with any further questions or remarks, which the whole jockey
club might not hear, took me back into the room we had quitted, and left
me to find, or make whatever acquaintance I could. Pampered and spoiled
as I was in the most difficult circles of London, I was beyond measure
indignant at the cavalier demeanour of this rustic Thane, whom I
considered a being as immeasurably beneath me in every thing else, as he
really was in antiquity of birth, and, I venture to hope, in cultivation
of intellect. I looked round the room, and did not recognize a being of
my acquaintance: I seemed literally thrown into a new world: the very
language in which the conversation was held, sounded strange to my ear.
I had always transgressed my general rule of knowing all men in all
grades, in the single respect of sporting characters: they were a
species of bipeds, that I would never recognize as belonging to the
human race. Alas! I now found the bitter effects of not following my
usual maxims. It is a dangerous thing to encourage too great a disdain
of one's inferiors: pride must have a fall.

After I had been a whole quarter of an hour in this strange place,
my better genius came to my aid. Since I fou