XTbe IRew 3obn IRussell 333 



But stranger announcements even than that were 

 sometimes made during divine service. Russell himself 

 used to relate that on a certain Sunday, while at 

 church in Cornwall, he saw a man posted just outside 

 the churchyard gate ; six silver spoons were stuck 

 into the band of his hat, and there he stood, shouting 

 at the top of his voice : — ' Plaize to tak' notiss. Thaise 

 zix zilver spunes to be wrastled vor next Thursday 

 at Poughill, and all gen'lemen wrastlers will receive 

 fair play.' The man, with the spoons in his hat, then 

 entered the church, went up into the singing gallery, 

 and hung it on a peg, from which it was perfectly 

 visible to the parson and the greater part of his con- 

 gregation. On another occasion, in the same locality, 

 but not the same church, snow lying on the ground, 

 the clergyman was reading, when a man walked in, 

 and with a loud voice proclaimed : ' I've got 'un,' 

 and immediately withdrew. He had sounded a well- 

 known note ; every farmer and labourer who possessed 

 a gun soon followed him, and in a couple of hours 

 brought to the village inn a fine fox murdered in cold 

 blood. 



Jack Russell tried at first to beguile the tedium of 

 a curate's life by taking up otter-hunting, but he had 

 a sorry lot of hounds. ' I walked three thousand miles,' 

 he says, ' without finding an otter ; and, although I must 

 have passed over scores, I might as well have searched 

 for a moose-deer.' The fact was, that his hounds didn't 

 know the scent of an otter, and when they came upon 

 it, dismissed it from their noses with contempt. Then 

 he bought Racer, a big foxhound, for a guinea. Racer 

 soon taught the rest how to find an otter, and the pack 

 killed thirty-five off the reel. 



