AFTEE DINNEE 



265 



a good purchase on his ankle, and is hauling hard from under the 

 table; while the anaesthetist, to keep at a safe distance, holds a 

 spongeful of chloroform to the patient's face with a pair of domestic 

 hearth tongs. JMeanwhile, lest the patient's head should break the 

 teeth of the first saw, another and greater one is being held in 

 readiness by an attendant in the background, who is carefully 

 sighting it to see if the teeth are in correct alignment. But this is 

 not all, for a second pair of operators are waiting to take their shift, 

 one with a centre-bit and the other with an axe, and both are 

 watching, one with judicial calm and the other with a gleaming eye, 

 a poker and pair of shears heating in a brazier. The style is some- 

 thing like that of Mr. Heath Eobinson, but is, in my judgment, 

 more genuinely comic in that 

 it is nothing like so far- 

 fetched. Possibly the whole 

 incident is imaginary. 



A more frequent and in- 

 evitaltle trial to beaglers, as 

 to all undergraduates, is the 

 examination bogey, symliolic- 

 ally presented by Mr. C. P. T. 

 Hawkes. 



Another page (see illus- 

 trations in the Preface) of Mr. 

 Penn's work shows at least 

 as keen a humour and presents 



a typical day's beagling. The first sketch shows the beagler at 

 12.15 in stout l)rogues and a vast coat inimitably posed on the 

 Pitt doorstep, while one of the page boys holds a bag of dry raiment 

 twice his own size in readiness for the brake. Others show him 

 between the hours of 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. actually engaged in beagling. 

 The last discovers him at 6.30 p.m. in the inn parlour, with the usual 

 stuffed wild duck and other ornaments, still devuurino- tea and l»read- 

 and-butter, with his big coat hanging on the door, wliile the Master 

 from the door objurgates the " blighter " for keeping the 1 )rake waiting. 



Another shows " a little quiet fun " in the beagle brake on the 



X.B. — The "General" is an Examination. 



