6 THE HUNTING FIELD 



The Member has merely to bamboozle people once 

 in six or seven years out of something that really is 

 hardly worth giving or receiving, and to change his 

 coat at short notice, but the Master of the Hounds 

 has to keep his soft solder pot boiling all the year 

 round, healing real or imaginary wounds, trying to 

 make farmers believe something very much like " black 

 being white," coaxing them into a credence that it 

 benefits wheat and sown grass to ride over them, that 

 foxes never touch lambs, and abhor poultry, that it 

 benefits hedges for horses to dance hornpipes upon 

 them, with many other similar and singularly curious 

 articles of belief. 



So much for the M.P. quality. 



Time ! which assuredly has begun to go quicker 

 since railways were introduced, has even carried the 

 gastronomic feats of " Dando," into the oblivion of all 

 forgetfulness ; yet let it not be said — Dando, though 

 dead, yet lives in the recollection of oyster-shop 

 keepers and licensed wittlers — Dando,^ w^ho could eat 

 a peck of oysters, and pick his teeth with a shoulder 

 of mutton bone for luncheon — Dando, the nimble, 

 plausible, dexterous Dando, who, with all the luggage 

 aboard, could outstrip the most heron-gutted chop- 

 house waiter, or the swiftest and best winded of the 

 great " unboiled " — Dando can never die ! Die he 

 may, in the common every day dolly-mop world, but 

 die he never can in the recollection of those whom 

 he honoured with his large, though somewhat ex- 

 pensive patronage. 



And how do we connect the feats of Dando with 



1 Dando, we may state for the benefit of the juvenile, was a 

 wandering sort of cormorant, much addicted to oysters, but 

 whose means being in no way proportionate to his appetite, 

 he used to be under the necessity of "bolting" after having 

 " bolted'' as many oysters as he could hold. He used to afford 

 "fine runs" to the police, and we believe it was in contempla- 

 tion at one time to engage him for the purpose of being hunted 

 by the Queen's stag bounds. 



