dress, a specimen of the flash style of sporting man, as exhibited on the
Turf, or more often perhaps in the Ring; Belcher neckcloth, with an
immense pin representing a jockey at full gallop; cut-away coat, corduroy
breeches, and boots with tops of a chalky white. Yet, withal, not the
air and walk of a genuine born and bred sporting man, even of the vulgar
order. Something about him which reveals the pretender. A would-be hawk
with a pigeon's liver,--a would-be sportsman with a Cockney's nurture.

Samuel Adolphus Poole is an orphan of respectable connections. His
future expectations chiefly rest on an uncle from whom, as godfather, he
takes the loathed name of Samuel. He prefers to sign himself Adolphus;
he is popularly styled Dolly. For his present existence he relies
ostensibly on his salary as an assistant in the house of a London
tradesman in a fashionable way of business. Mr. Latham, his employer,
has made a considerable fortune, less by his shop than by discounting the
bills of his customers, or of other borrowers whom the loan draws into
the net of the custom. Mr. Latham connives at the sporting tastes of
Dolly Poole. Dolly has often thus been enabled to pick up useful pieces
of information as to the names and repute of such denizens of the
sporting world as might apply to Mr. Latham for temporary accommodation.
Dolly Poole has many sporting friends; he has also many debts. He has
been a dupe, he is now a rogue; but he wants decision of character to put
into practice many valuable ideas that his experience of dupe and his
development into rogue suggest to his ambition. Still, however, now and
then, wherever a shabby trick can be safely done, he is what he calls
"lucky." He has conceived a prodigious admiration for Jasper Losely, one
cause for which will be explained in the dialogue about to be recorded;
another cause for which is analogous to that loving submission with which
some ill-conditioned brute acknowledges a master in the hand that has
thrashed it. For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting