ry 
THE NATURALIST DEVELOPING. 69 
thuugh all but the greener ones take good care not to give 
him too good a chance to bite, which he sometimes does with 
severity while thus “playing ’possum.” 
Sometimes he is tree’d in @ large tree, and then the fire 
‘ must be built, and a serious job we have of it to get at him ; 
but the attempt is seldom relinquished until success has at- 
tended it. The negroes take charge of the game on our 
return, and the next night there is a grand possum roast at 
the Quarter, in which we participate only on the sly as have 
been with the hunt. 
But to digress about our teacher. He was an eccentric person, 
who having been poor in his young days, had acquired a fond- 
ness for teaching, which he had adopted then from a necessity, 
but which continued to cling to him through his life, although 
his marriage had brought him a handsome fortune. He there- 
fore kept up his school as an amateur, rather than from the ne- 
cessities of the case. His plantation was a very extensive one, 
situated on the edge of a wild country, and his admirable 
school the favored and noted resort of the sons of the southern 
gentry, from far and wide. 
He was a good old man, that father Hinton, and loved us 
all as his own children. We were allowed much more license, 
on parole of honor, than was usual at such places; the old 
gentleman even took a grotesque sort of pleasure, which he 
awkwardly attempted to conceal, in examining and comment- 
ing upon, and particularly in weighing and noting down the 
weight of our game, the legitimate produce of any and all 
sur wild sports, except the night-hunts, which were strictly 
interdicted. 
I shall remember his appearance to my dying day, on one 
occasion of this sort. 
We had made an unusually successful excursion to the 
” distant Bottomless Spring Mill Pond on one Saturday, and 
the next morning, which was Sunday, we were very eager to 
exhibit to him our trophies, of which we were very proud. 
