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