CHAPTER IV 



" But mirth instead, and dimpling smiles, 

 And wit, that gloomy care beguiles ; 

 And joke, and pun, and merry tale. 

 And toasts that round the table sail : 

 Wliile laughter, bursting through the crowd 

 In vollies, tells our joys aloud."— Somebville. 



There is many an amusing thing clone and said in a hunting- 

 field; and, though some of the jokes will at times be coarse, 

 still there are many that will bear repeating. An answer from 

 a farmer one day to Sir George Wombwell, who was looking 

 for his second horse, was quaint. 



" I say, damn it, farmer, have you seen my fellow ? " 

 " No ! upon my soul,'" replied the bluff agriculturist, with 

 his hands in his breeches pockets, " I never did ! " 



A gallant officer, who had lost the hounds, called to a farmer 

 in the HaiTow Vale, who was standing at some little distance with 

 a fork on his shoulder, and asked him if he knew which way 

 the hounds were i-unning. The farmer nodded apparently in the 

 affirmative, and beckoned the soldier up for further news. My 

 friend rode up, and not being on his guai'd, was taken prisoner, 

 and, I believe, had to pay for his liberty. I have been told 

 that my gallant friend Colonel Scott, of the Guards, was once 

 seized in the Harrow Vale, and locked up in a mill, but that he 

 made such a terrible row, and was so uneasy in his prison, that 

 he even set the mill going, and in the confusion effected his 

 escape without ransom. Of course, among it all I did not entirely 

 escape molestation. A butcher's dog near the Magpies Inn 



