CHAPTER IV 



' ' But mirth instead, and dimpling smiles, 

 And wit, that gloomy care beguiles ; 

 And joke, and pun, and merry tale, 

 And toasts that round the table sail : 

 While laughter, bursting through the crowd 

 In vollies, tells our joys aloud." SOMEBVILLE. 



THERE is many an amusing thing done and said in a hunting- 

 field; and, though some of the jokes will at times be coarse, 

 still there are many that will bear repeating. An answer from 

 a farmer one day to Sir George Wombwell, who was looking 

 for his second horse, was quaint. 



" I say, damn it, farmer, have you seen my fellow ? " 

 " No ! upon my soul," replied the bluff agriculturist, with 

 his hands in his breeches pockets, " I never did ! " 



A gallant officer, who had lost the hounds, called to a farmer 

 in the Harrow Vale, who was standing at some little distance with 

 a fork on his shoulder, and asked him if he knew which way 

 the hounds were running. The farmer nodded apparently in the 

 affirmative, and beckoned the soldier up for further news. My 

 friend rode up, and not being on his guard, was taken prisoner, 

 and, I believe, had to pay for his liberty. I have been told 

 that my gallant friend Colonel Scott, of the Guards, was once 

 seized in the Harrow Vale, and locked up in a mill, but that he 

 made such a terrible row, and was so uneasy in his prison, that 

 he even set the mill going, and in the confusion effected his 

 escape without ransom. Of course, among it all I did not entirely 

 escape molestation. A butcher's dog near the Magpies Inn 



