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opinions " to the winds ; so the next time the old cock 

 called, we began to crow over him. " Well, where's winter ? " 

 said we; "where's all the bad weather you promised us?' 

 " Young man," replied he, gravely (we are only sixty-three), 

 " young man," replied he, knitting his shaggy, snow-white 

 brows, " I have lived a long time in the world, and I never 

 knew Death, the Tax-gatherer, or an English winter forget 

 to come. I don't mean to say," continued he, "that we 

 shall have it all in the Mc-tro-po-lis, but I mean to say that 

 winter is not over yet." With that he resumed his cocked 

 hat and cane, and went across the water to the other " un- 

 dying one," at Astley's. 



Old gentlemen don't like to be la,ughed at — young ones 

 neither, sometimes — and we saw no more of our "oldest 

 inhabitant " till the middle of March. The season in the 

 meantime had been quiescent, no great advance in vegetation, 

 but no check to what had arrived. As the " old 'un " had 

 rather inconvenienced us by his absence, having had some 

 questions put about events that occurred shortly before the 

 great fire of London, a scene at which he was particularly 

 active, we did not think it prudent to broach the subject of the 

 truant winter, and the " oldest inhabitant " having got 

 through the arrear of antiquarian questions, took his departure 

 in the hurried way people do when there's a disagreeable topic 

 they don't want mentioned. 



Hunting, we reckoned, was fast winding up. March has 

 never much ingratiated itself with us as a hunting month. It 

 sounds harsh and repulsive, speaks rather of high winds, hard 

 dusty roads, and flying fallows, than of that delightful, sloppy, 

 spongy, splash-my-boots state of things peculiar to the legitimate 

 chase. 



Third week in March, and spring slowly, though steadily on 

 the advance. This "oldest inhabitant " is getting " too old," 

 thought we, for he had looked in at our publisher's, on 



