Wheji lue Old Fogeys zvere Boys. 203 



we always kept a badger and a huntsman, who provided 

 two terriers and a bull-dog daring the winter. It was a 

 sporting school, as Hampshire was a very sporting county, 

 added to which a large number of the boys were sons of 

 fox-hunting country gentlemen, and many of their boys 

 hunted in the holidays. 



Perhaps it would astonish the dons now to see boys going 

 on to St. Catherine's Hill (part of the Portsmouth Downs 

 range) in white cord breeches, brown cloth leggings, tight 

 at the knee and falling loose over the boots, green cut-away 

 coats and gilt basket buttons, coming out of College on a 

 holiday morning : but such was the usual dress of many 

 Commoners on holidays, and the big College fellows high up 

 in the school, who wore gowns, adopted the cords and 

 gaiters. The badger-hunting was excellent fun, though I 

 suppose we should be fined five pounds by the magistrates 

 now for following the sport. The badger was turned out 

 of the sack and started up the downs, and it was a good 

 fine breather, running four or five miles, mostly uphill, on a 

 winter's morning. When we had had enough the bull-dog 

 was let go to pin the badger, and after a stiffish tussle some- 

 times the badger went into the sack to live to fight another 

 day. Not a few boys kept guns, and many a stray hare and 

 partridge came to hand, and I have known such a thing 

 as a duck or goose turn up, but it did not much matter, as,, 

 when old Warden Barter was king, farmers got paid for 

 College damages. Foot steeplechasing from the top of the 

 downs to St. Cross, across two rivers and the water- 

 meadows, was also a favourite amusement for a change. 

 Then there was the sporting fraternity, who took in Bell'^ 

 Life, got up lotteries, and had a small Tattersall's of their 

 own, and made shilling books, and paid up too ; but I 

 never knew little boys urged to subsci-ibe or anything of 

 that sort, as recorded in '' Tom Brown." Any boy trying 



