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.