THE FOOT DEAG 



33 



through the medley to the music of a yard of tin, and so out to 

 Swavesey, or Willingham ; or best of all to Overcourt Ferry, where 

 we cross, brake and all, on a floating bridge or " grind," with its 

 quaint bits of chain, with a T-shaped handle at one end, and a disc at 

 the other for hauling on the hawser which warps the huge grind over, 

 and put up at Mrs. Hemington's pleasant inn. I once stayed there 

 for a term to read after I had taken my degree, and shot snipe and 

 fished for pike,^ and came in now and again to a coach, and to do 

 " Lab." work. But I am getting reminiscent and personal. Yet it 

 is to the point that the poem has made me so, and I maintain that 

 in spite of faults in technique it is good 

 descriptive stuff, and thus in some sense 

 at least literature. Now for the prose 

 from the Gladstone diary : — 



" On Monday, November 15, met at 

 Bottisham Swan. Drawing on the left of 

 the Newmarket Eoad from the village, 

 we got a hare on foot, which took us over 

 the Wilbraham Eoad, where we lost her 

 after about twenty minutes' run. Drawing 

 again towards Bottisham, and crossing over 

 to the other side of the Newmarket Eoad, 

 we were some time in finding, and at last 

 as we were nearing Wilbraham a hare got 

 up in some turnips, and took us towards 

 Wilbraham, and then across the Wilbraham 

 road towards Bottisham, where after about 

 twenty minutes' run we lost her. After 

 this we drew till we went home. ~ 



" Scent was perfectly terrible. A most rotten, joyless day." 



<5)(:a 



Who does not know those days, and were they ever better 

 described ? The tedious repetition of the names of places and all 

 the boredom of the details of a run of days gone by help to rub 

 it in, " A most rotten, joyless day " ! And yet where there is 



^ I once caught one. Experts get good sport. 



