REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



CHAPTER I 



1 ' Though wit in a ballad should bite like truth, 

 Or else 'twill scarce please our fantastical youth, 

 Yet here shall be nothing but dunstable truth, 

 Which nobody can deny." 



A New Ballad to an Old Tune. 



MY love of field sports commenced at a very early age, when I 

 was just able to follow my father, and see him shoot blackbirds, 

 in summer, off the strawberry-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. 1 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 time un- 

 common jibber, when he takes it in his head to be heavy, or hang 



1 It would be unfortunate if any youngster reading these lines should 

 imagine that these pursuits were essential in any degree to the character 

 of a sportsman. The more a boy is inclined to field sports, the deeper 

 will be his abhorrence of unnecessary cruelty. ED. 



