Major Whyte Melville. 267 



them. From oufc the great palace of iniquity in St. 

 Jameses Street he had himself on more than one occasion 

 retired a poorer if not a wiser man, a fellow-countryman 

 and brother-sportsman having forwarded him sums to 

 extricate him from difficulties that at the time seemed 

 absolutely overwhelming. With him by your side, though 

 it might be that 



" The way was lon^, the wind, too, cold, 

 Your hunter both infirm and old," 



but you little recked of the gloom of a November after- 

 noon, or of the ^' peck ^^ of your wearied horse. ^' Another 

 of those and down you come/^ was the usual encouraging 

 comment on a step that had brought the heart into your 

 mouth ; and this would be followed by some amusing 

 moralizing on the ups and downs of life. No one, however, 

 met these with greater philosophy than himself; and on 

 two of the most trying disasters that can happen to a hunt- 

 ing-man — one when his horse died in the field — and on 

 another when a favourite mare was seriously injured by 

 wire — he displayed a resignation to the inevitable which 

 Socrates himself might have envied. 



In his eyes the greatest evil in life, next to a failure 

 of health, was Wire ; and the greatest miscreant, the 

 man who put it up. The spirited Ode he called " Ware 

 Wire; a Protest," was breathed out from the very 

 depths of his heart; and when he wrote the lines : — 



" And bitter the curses you launch in your ire. 

 At the villain who fenced his enclosure with wire," 



he gave utterance to emotions that nothing else could 

 have aroused in his kindly nature. Whilst penning 

 these lines, his feelings probably were of much the 



