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Updated: June 5, 2025
What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say, of a nominal L5,000 a-year, compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect his rights, plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward.
There was a good fire in the coffee-room, which looked like a drawing-room in a large old-fashioned mansion, and was hung round with engravings of the portraits of the county members, and a master of fox-hounds, and other pictures. We made ourselves comfortable with some tea, and retired early.
If the pheasants are so numerous and so tame that passing carters have to whip them out of the way of the horses, it is hardly wonderful if one should disappear now and then. Nor is he like the Running Jack that used to accompany the more famous packs of fox-hounds, opening gates, holding horses, and a hundred other little services, and who kept up with the hunt by sheer fleetness of foot.
The fox-hounds are still smaller than the stag-hounds, are generally white in colour, with clouds of black and tan. They have been known to run at full speed for ten hours, during which the hunters were obliged to change their horses three times, or abandon the pursuit.
"Were you ever in Gloucestershire?" said he to Peregrine; who replying in the negative, he thus went on: "I have got a house there, where I should be glad to see you. Let us go down together during the Easter holidays; I can promise you good country fare and wholesome exercise; for I have everything within myself, and as good a pack of fox-hounds as any in the three kingdoms.
"Bless me, father," said eagerly the young Pisistratus, who had swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and figure of this inviting calculation, "why, we should be as rich as Squire Rollick; and then, you know, sir, you could keep a pack of fox-hounds." "And buy a large library," added Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge of human nature as to its appropriate temptations.
Of the hospitality of the military gentlemen of the Presidency, and especially of the Dum Dum Artillery, I have pleasure in reporting more favourably. Calcutta has its theatre, its clubs, its races, and its fox-hounds. On the race-course may be seen some fine specimens of the Arab horse, small compared to the English racer, but unsurpassed for spirit and symmetry.
None knew anything of him in London, and I imagined therefore that he might have settled down into a country gentleman. I was fully prepared to find him marshalling the fox-hounds or beating the preserves; and you may consequently imagine my mortification on learning at my inn that he had not been residing here for many years; further I know not!"
He went to the barn to see his old mare and the Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth.
It was only the end of September, but an early frost had flushed the woods and hillsides into a hint of the crimson and gold they were soon to wear in more profligate splendor. The fragrant, blue mist of wood smoke drifted over the fields at the foot of the knobs. The hills were seen through a wash of purple. From somewhere to the far left drifted the mellowed music of fox-hounds.
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