IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS. QQ 



the depths of the river, which he did. Hounds passed through Melton 

 at 2 p.m. on their way home, the sprinkHng of people who had got 

 away after them, including the huntsman and H. Shipway (the first 

 whipper-in), Mr. Baird (the Master), who with a solitary hound only 

 caught them just beyond John o' Gaunt ; Mr. Tailby, Mr. Arthur 

 (now Sir Arthur) Fludyer, Mr. Fernie, Mr. Evan Hanbury, the late 

 Count Zborowski, Mr. Gordon Cunard, the late Mr. Basil Cochrane, 

 who hunted from Asfordby Hall and was brought back home by a 

 gallant fox ; Captain Frank Forester, who was put out of action 

 through his horse cutting a leg at a stone wall on Woodborough 

 Hill;"the late Mr. W. Gosling, Mr. H. R. Finch, Captain (now 

 Colonel; F. G. Blair, Mr. Stirling Stuart, Mr. E. C. Clayton, who 

 was turned over by some uncompromising timber just beyond the 

 Tilton and Launde Road at the very outset ; the late Captain 

 " Bay " Middleton, Mr. Granville Farquhar, the late Mr. F. J-famlyn, 

 Captain Jacobson, Mr. Dunlop, the late Mr. W. G. Marshall, Mr. 

 G. Parker, one lady only, Mrs. George Baird, and the writer. As 

 for the truant 14 couples and the second whipper-in, they roamed 

 the country for miles, accompanied by a huge field representing the 

 fiower of Leicestershire, and went home when at length the full 

 scope of the disaster was realised. 



At Skeffington Rectory in the old days, the conversation 

 seldom strayed long from hunting, shooting, fishing, or sport and 

 games of some kind. Once my mother took my father to task for 

 encouraging us— we were five boys — to think and talk such a lot 

 about sport, and then added, " Besides, at our ages " — they were 

 over 70 and 80 respectively, my mother being the younger — " you 

 and I ought to be thinking of going hence;" whereupon he demurely 

 rejoined, " rather you than I ! " 



As I have always understood, one of John Leech's amusing 

 illustrations in " Punch," depicting a considerable measure of 

 freedom with " the bottle " on the part of our forefathers, owed its 

 origin to a hard-riding Leicestershire cleric. " In the good old 

 days " it was by no means uncommon for the women folk, who had 

 exchanged the dining-room for the drawing-room — otherwise, and 

 more correctly, the withdrawing-room, — to hear recurrent thuds 

 through the partitioning wall, which denoted that chairs were 

 being suddenly vacated by their better halves for the floor ! Any- 

 how, the story went that on one occasion a host, although there 

 had been no flagrant cases of drinking until subsidence beneath 

 the table followed, thought it as well, just for the form of the 



