CHRISTMASSING 55 



perhaps best opportunity of disporting themselves. If so, 

 the hare, I take it, must in Hertfordshire be almost as 

 worthy an animal as the wily fox, or the fatted — I beg 

 pardon ; put it down, please, to Christmas fare — I meant 

 the noble stag. 



Speaking of Christmas fare, I could not but be struck, 

 during my trot to kennel and back, by the thoroughness 

 with which all rustic Hertfordshire does its duty by 

 Boxing Day. They evinced their allegiance in very 

 various fashion, though each and every form of ad- 

 herence was plainly attributable to the only medium 

 through which the honest working-man even indirectly 

 assists his employers in making up the required revenue 

 of the country. But the method w^hich seemed to me to 

 be most original of all — and containing one of those 

 practical lessons for which I am ever on the look-out — 

 was in the case of a gay roysterer whom at first sight 1 

 took to be engaged in beating a turnip-field for rabbits. 

 The Hertfordshire lanes, as you may know — and as all 

 riding men of Hertfordshire complain — are very narrow, 

 and occasionally have a ditch under either bank, which 

 is very dangerous, on Boxing Day. Even in his cups 

 our festive one was fully aware of this. His expansive 

 soul was not to be " cribbed, cabined, and confined " 

 within such earthborn limits ; still less did he mean to 

 chant his tuneful "Won't go home till morning" upon 

 the broad of his back in one of these contemptible ditches. 

 So he swarmed up the slippery bank ; found footing — 

 vague and complicated it is true, but still footing — amid 

 the turnips ; and he zigzagged his route unhindered, 

 taking a course that quite answered his purpose as being 

 more or less parallel with the directing but despised lane. 

 Had he been a Londoner, the same instinct would no 

 doubt have bidden him enjoy his Boxing Day stroll in 

 Sackville Street, the only thoroughfare in the metropolis, 

 I am instructed, that is altogether devoid of lamp-posts. 

 He became obviously very much annoyed with me — either 

 on account of my undisguised amusement, or because in 

 the innocence of my heart I asked him, " Must he really 

 go home, or wouldn't he take a little more?" — for he 



