“Yours obediently, BENJAMIN CAUNT. “June 18th, 1857.” “NOTE.――Caunt has left £10 in our hands to prove he is in earnest.” This Waterloo Day flourish of trumpets was followed the next week by the fearless little Tom covering Big Ben’s “tenner,” announcing that, if his match with Caunt did not go on, he was prepared to meet his other challenger, Tom Paddock. The “lame and impotent conclusion” of Caunt’s challenge is soon told. Ben proposed that Sayers should come to his house (of course as a “draw”) to draw up articles, &c. Tom didn’t see it; and as he was engaged in the provinces making hay while the sun shone, he offered to sign articles, if transmitted to him, and duly post the needful with the editor of _Bell’s Life_. This, on the other hand, didn’t suit Ben’s fireside, and so the incongruous affair ended in smoke. Meantime Paddock had a severe accident, which put his right hand _hors de combat_, and a disabling illness followed. Ben now announced his departure for “sea breezes and strict training,” and Nat did the same, which brings us to the 22nd day of September, 1857. As we have already remarked, the match from its first inception was considered so extraordinary, not only from the great disparity in the size of the men, but from the supposed irreparable state of Nat’s constitution (he having, as was known to many, sought the advice of the principal physician of the Brompton Hospital for Consumption), that the public generally looked upon it with distrust and suspicion, and up to the very last deposit sporting men refused to believe that it would ever come to a fight. Indeed, so strong was this impression on the minds of many, and not a few of them influential patrons of the P. R., that they pooh-poohed the whole affair, absented themselves from the houses where deposits were made good, and also from the fight itself. Great therefore was their disappointment, and no less their disgust, when they learnt that not only had the men met, but that they had actually fought a battle which was certainly as well worth seeing as almost any modern battle between big men.