THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



At all events, he remains a bachelor, and the question will 

 be asked ' Who is to inherit the family estates at his 

 decease ? ' This is answered in a few words. A younger 

 brother of his father, not hitherto mentioned in these pages, 

 has three sons, and to the eldest of them will the entail be 

 continued. But why has he not been mentioned ? For the 

 simple reason, that his residence has been in India since his 

 twentieth year, and his reason for having made it such, was 

 the honourable feeling that an imprudent marriage, as regarded 

 station in life, had, as he imagined, rendered him somewhat 

 obnoxious to the rest of his family. Imprudent it might have 

 been, inasmuch as it dropped him a degree in the nicely- 

 balanced general scale of refined society, in other words, to a 

 certain extent he had lost caste ; unhappy, it was not, for a 

 better wife no man possessed, and it is more than probable 

 that this very circumstance may have had some weight in the 

 breast of his kind-hearted nephew, in determining him to 

 continue in the single state. At all events, a bachelor he 

 remains, and rather an old one at present ; but his house is 

 occasionally the resort of all the best families in the neigh- 

 bourhood ; and, by his general conduct and deportment to all 

 classes of persons, he shows, beyond the power of refutation, 

 that it is possible for a gentleman to devote himself, with 

 enthusiasm, to all the sports of flood and held, simultaneously 

 with the performance of all the duties imposed upon him, both 

 by God and man. 



FINIS 



Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limitkd, Edinburgh 



2c 



