He Has Anxiously Endeavored To Call
Up A Recollection Of What He Saw Of That Portly Personage; And Has
Ever Since Kept A Curious Eye On All Gentlemen Of More Than Ordinary
Dimensions, Whom He Has Seen Getting Into Stage Coaches.
All in vain!
The features he had caught a glimpse of seem common to the whole race
of stout gentlemen; and the great unknown remains as great an unknown
as ever.]
A HUNTING DINNER.
I was once at a hunting dinner, given by a worthy fox-hunting old
Baronet, who kept Bachelor's Hall in jovial style, in an ancient
rook-haunted family mansion, in one of the middle counties. He had been
a devoted admirer of the fair sex in his young days; but having
travelled much, studied the sex in various countries with distinguished
success, and returned home profoundly instructed, as he supposed, in
the ways of woman, and a perfect master of the art of pleasing, he had
the mortification of being jilted by a little boarding school girl, who
was scarcely versed in the accidence of love.
The Baronet was completely overcome by such an incredible defeat;
retired from the world in disgust, put himself under the government of
his housekeeper, and took to fox-hunting like a perfect Jehu. Whatever
poets may say to the contrary, a man will grow out of love as he grows
old; and a pack of fox hounds may chase out of his heart even the
memory of a boarding-school goddess. The Baronet was when I saw him as
merry and mellow an old bachelor as ever followed a hound; and the
love he had once felt for one woman had spread itself over the whole
sex; so that there was not a pretty face in the whole country round,
but came in for a share.
The dinner was prolonged till a late hour; for our host having no
ladies in his household to summon us to the drawing-room, the bottle
maintained its true bachelor sway, unrivalled by its potent enemy the
tea-kettle. The old hall in which we dined echoed to bursts of
robustious fox-hunting merriment, that made the ancient antlers shake
on the walls. By degrees, however, the wine and wassail of mine host
began to operate upon bodies already a little jaded by the chase. The
choice spirits that flashed up at the beginning of the dinner, sparkled
for a time, then gradually went out one after another, or only emitted
now and then a faint gleam from the socket.
Some of the briskest talkers, who had given tongue so bravely at the
first burst, fell fast asleep; and none kept on their way but certain
of those long-winded prosers, who, like short-legged hounds, worry on
unnoticed at the bottom of conversation, but are sure to be in at the
death. Even these at length subsided into silence; and scarcely any
thing was heard but the nasal communications of two or three veteran
masticators, who, having been silent while awake, were indemnifying
the company in their sleep.
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