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That was now the difficulty.


CHAPTER VIII
OLD TOM TOWLER

[Illustration]
There are few more difficult persons to identify than a huntsman in
undress, and of all queer ones perhaps old Tom Towler was the queerest. Tom
in his person furnished an apt illustration of the right appropriation of
talent and the fitness of things, for he would neither have made a groom,
nor a coachman, nor a postillion, nor a footman, nor a ploughman, nor a
mechanic, nor anything we know of, and yet he was first-rate as a huntsman.
He was too weak for a groom too small for a coachman, too ugly for a
postillion, too stunted for a footman, too light for a ploughman, too
useless-looking for almost anything.
Any one looking at him in 'mufti' would exclaim, 'what an unfortunate
object!' and perhaps offer him a penny, while in his hunting habiliments
lords would hail him with, 'Well, Tom, how are you?' and baronets ask him
'how he was?' Commoners felt honoured by his countenance, and yet, but for
hunting, Tom would have been wasted--a cypher--an inapplicable sort of man.


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