REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



CHAPTEH I. 



" Though wit in a ballad should bite like truth, 

 Or else 'twill scarce please our fantastical youth ; 

 Yet here shall be nothing but dunstahle truth 

 Which nobody can deny." 



*' A new Ballad to an old Tune" — Printed a, d. m.dcc.xv. 



My love of Field Sports commenced at a very early 

 age, when I was just able to follow my father, and 

 see hhn shoot blackbirds, in summer, off the straw- 

 berry-beds at Cranford. The trapping of tomtits 

 and sparrows soon after commenced, my amusements 

 enlivened occasionally with the chase of a bag-mouse, 

 trapped and enlarged upon the lawn. The smell of 

 the powder I first saw fired at those blackbirds is 

 fresh in my nostrils still ; and now my own gun will 

 at times, by what still seems the perfume of its 

 powder, bring back to me the sensations of a child, 

 just the same as scents in the air will remind one of 

 scenes and places long faded from before us ; or, 

 romantic reader, that from a sweet flower bring back 

 the sigh of the lip that presided over the white hand 

 that gave it to us years ago. 



Time, that awfully fast stepper, but at the same 



B 



