370 RURAL SPORTS. [PART II. 



writer a very, very kind answer. Thus have 

 they gone on. So far from being a trouble to 

 me, they have been all pleasure and advantage. 

 For many years they have been so many secre 

 taries. I have dictated scores of registers to 

 them, which have^owe to the press without my 

 ever looking at them. I dictated registers to 

 them at the age of thirteen, and even of tivelve. 

 They have, as to trust-worthiness, been grown 

 persons, at eleven or twelve. I could leave my 

 house and affairs, the paying of men, or the 

 going from home on business, to them at an 

 age when boys in England, in general, want 

 servants to watch them to see that they do not 

 kill chickens, torment kittens, or set the build 

 ings on fire. 



375. Here is a good deal of boasting; but, 

 it will not be denied, that I have done a great 

 deal in a short public life, and I see no harm in 

 telling my readers of any of the means, that I 

 have employed ; especially as I know of few 

 greater misfortunes than that of breeding up 

 things to be school-boys all their lives. It is 

 not, that I have so many wonders of the world: 

 it is that I have pursued a rational plan of edu 

 cation, and one that any man may pursue, if he 

 will, with similar effects. I remembered, too, 

 that 1 myself had had a sportsman-education. 

 Iran after the hare-hounds at the age of nine or 



