Hound Show at Redcar. 159 



Calendar description of the ground. A few worn 

 posters of the previous October which tell that Mr. 

 Gladstone is underlined for a speech at Middlesboro', 

 and that those desirous to hear him can do so for 

 " one fare, there and back," prophesy of that dreary- 

 looking meadow where Voltigeur, The Cure, Fan- 

 dango, and Lord Fauconberg were first, second, and 

 highly commended for the " Cleveland Hundred 

 Pounds." On the left is the great estuary of the Tees, 

 studded with beacons looking like pigeon-houses to 

 mark its original channel, and a few gulls and a re- 

 cumbent donkey are the only tenants of the broad 

 acres of ooze. To the right is the Cleveland vale, 

 above the grey remains of Guisboro' Abbey ; then the 

 sand-hills thicken, and grow most appropriately yellow 

 with dog standards, and the Redcar field, gay with 

 tents and union-jacks, and bits of scarlet bunting, and 

 with its hunters — through which Lord Combermere 

 and Sir Watkin are just taking a run — all in a row ; 

 to say nothing of Mr. Booth's Queen of the Vale and 

 Lord Zetland's white bull Savile, is safely reached at 

 last. 



Captain Percy Williams was the Cresswell of the 

 hound bench, and we never saw him work harder and 

 balance the points more carefully in the course of his 

 enormous judicial practice, both sitting as judge at 

 Nisi Prins at Brocklesby and In Banco in the West 

 and North Ridings. Mr. Anstruther Thomson, who, 

 like his man " Fred," looked from the first as if he was 

 mentally laying two to one on his chance, sat about 

 the centre of the front row, with his arm in a sling, 

 the result of a chop in the woodlands — not with his 

 hounds, but an axe. There, too, were Sir David 

 Baird and Mr. Kinloch, with their entries from the 

 Lothians, the present Lord Feversham, and, though 

 last not least, Mr. Tom Andrews, who was all anxiety 

 to see " Our Old Stdta?i " brought out. The old dog 

 was rather bashful in such high company, and went to 



