MR. SMITH AS AN OCTOGENARIAN. 115 



liveries, and take their station around the table. The duke, 

 to whom his guest's complaint had been reported, feeling 

 satisfied that every proper attention had been paid to 

 Mr. Smith, for whom he always entertained a sincere regard, 

 took this significant mode of reproving his testy humour. 

 At another time he complained of the scarcity of muffins, 

 upon which the servants received orders, when next the 

 guests assembled at the breakfast table, to pour in upon 

 him a perpetual stream of muffins. Each footman, in turn, 

 accordingly presented to the bewildered squire an unceasing 

 succession of hot plates, the chorus being, "Muffins, Mr. Smith." 

 Until Mr. Smith had reached his eightieth year, which he 

 did in May, 1856, he showed no signs of physical or mental 

 decay. His head was as clear and • his hand as firm as they 

 had been twenty years before. If he felt himself not quite 

 well of a morning, he used to ])lunge his head into cold 

 water and hold it there as long as he could. This, he 

 said, always put him to rights. He had returned to four 

 days' hunting in the week, it is true ; but on these days the 

 farmers were delighted to see him vault on horseback as 

 usual, and galloj^ down the sheepfed hill-sides with all the 

 joyous alacrity of a boy of eighteen. 



" You yet might see the old man in a morning, 

 Lusty as health, come ruddy to the field, 

 And then pursue the chase." — Otway. 



This enduring character of his riding is what renders it so 

 essentially different from that of other men. He was still 

 the same Assheton Smith, who had hunted in the last cen- 

 tury ; who had, for nearly fifty years, been a master ol 

 hounds ; who had actually been in the saddle for a period 

 of seventy years — the ordinary term of man's life — who 

 might have hunted with Pitt and Fox, had they been sports- 

 men — and who had outlived three generations of fox-hun- 

 ters. With most other men the best of the s[)iiit dies, or 

 at all events waxes somewhat faint, when the prime of 



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