186 GETTING A GUINEA 



peculiar propensities of oui^ people, as the following 

 anecdote will show : — 



Giving a dinner one day to the neighbouring gentry, 

 at which he made a great display, '' according to the 

 custom of the Jews," one of his guests, the master of the 

 H.H.^ than whom a better sportsman, or a kinder master 

 or a gentleman more respected never lived in the county, 

 accidentally broke a beautiful china dessert plate. This 

 was not unobserved by the host, who said, in his broken 

 dialect, — 



" Got plesh my soul, every voun of dose plates cost me 

 a guinea ! " 



Whereupon the offender put his hand in his pocket, 

 and taking out a coin of that value, jauntingly threw it 

 towards the head of the table. The company expressed 

 their surprise by their looks, but they did more by their 

 smiles when they saw their host quietly take it up and put 

 it in his pocket ! 



As he lived in a mansion adjoining the Hampshire 

 country, he sometimes hunted Avith them on the alternate 

 day with his own. One morning, when the former met 

 at Beworth Cross-roads, finding a fox in Thorley Wood, 

 always a certain find, we ran him to Blackhouse, where 

 we came to a check. The Dutch gentleman and others 

 were quietly seated on their horses, not smoking their 

 cigars, as is now so much the fashion, but waiting the 

 effects of a cast that the master was making — a scientific 

 acquirement necessary to the jDroper understanding of 

 this noble sport, in which he excelled — when suddenly 

 the hounds, hitting off the scent together, gave forth that 



^ Truman Villebois, Esq. 



