e most convenient vehicle for instruction."

Concerning a case of bear-baiting we have a most detailed account which
Calvert heads with "The Baiting of a Bear at Pickering, Tuesday, Aug.
15th, 1809, which I did myself witness." Then he begins: "A week Wednesday
senight there did with drum and pan pipes parade publickly the streets of
this town two mountebanks leading by a chain a monster brown bruin which,
as well as it being a good dancer and handing of its pole, its master did
aclaim it to be the master of any dog of no odds what be its breed and
which they would match for a crown to come off conqueror if given fair
play and a fifteen-foot chain. Now it happening that in these parts there
be living several sporting men some of which be owners of bull dogs of
good courage and nowther dog nor master ever shirking a fight more than
one dog was entered for to test its skill."

A day was fixed for the contests which were to take place in the
castleyard, and soon the news was so handed from mouth to mouth that the
demand for seats in the rough wooden stand, erected for those who chose to
pay, was so great that another stand was built and the first one was
enlarged.

On the appointed day a huge concourse including "farmers, butchers,
hucksters, badgers, cadgers, horse-jobbers, drovers, loafers and scamps
and raggels of all kinds" assembled in the castleyard.

There were "not a few young sparks and bespurred and beruffled bucks come
thither from as far as Hull" who had brought with them certain overdressed
women.

The first dog matched against the bear was owned by one Castle Jack "a
worthless waistrel." The bear received the rush of the dog standing on his
hind legs and gripped him in his forepaws, biting and crushing him to
death. After this no one seemed inclined to let their dogs go to such
certain death and the assemblage gradually became disorderly and many
quarrels and fights took place before the crowd finally dispersed.

Calvert says, "and so when I did withdraw myself, the whole crowd seemed
to be owther cursing, fighting, or loudly proffering for to fight any one.
As I took my steps back to my uncle I could not help but consider that
those of the Methodist holding, who did as we went towards the green [at
the west end of the market-place] beg and pray of us to be mindfull of our
sinfull pleasures and of the wroth to come and who did pray us to then
turn from our sinfull course, and though we who did pass them