226 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



sumption of beer. " How many pints did you have 

 whilst in the tap-room .? " " Only one," answered Mon- 

 tague. ]\Ir. Wells demanded if he would swear he had 

 not had ten pints. He would swear he hadn't. '• Will 

 you swear you had not nine or eight } " Still came the 

 denial ; then followed the usual brow-beating, from seven 

 to six, even to four. Whereupon Montague said, " It's 

 no use your bothering me about how many pints I had ; 

 I'll swear I had but one, but how many times it was 

 filled I can't say." Amidst loud laughter Mr. Wells 

 ceased his cross-examination. 



On another occasion, the day after a private dinner 

 at my house, Mr. Newton, the Marlborough Street chief 

 macristrate, asked Mr. Charles Merewether how the 

 late Hillam Mills, who was fond of a good glass of 

 wine, got on after the wine was on the table ? " Oh ! 

 very well," he answered, "he helped himself as usual 

 every time the port came to him and never passed the 

 claret." Poor old Hillam Mills, he was truly a boon 

 companion ; once when I was visiting him at his resi- 

 dence near Ipswich, he took me in a fly to call on the 

 Lord Chief Baron, who lived at The Chantry, a house 

 near the town. I asked the driver if he was a voter for 

 the borough ? " No," he replied in the sing-song ver- 

 nacular of the Eastern Counties, " I wish I was. I've 

 only a vote for the Coperation, and I only gets half-a- 

 crown for my vote there, and I should have a sovereign 

 if I was a woter for the Borough." This clenched an 

 argument I was having with Mills about the value of 

 the franchise, which at that time was the burning 

 political question of the day. 



