"Dear Punch," writes a valued Correspondent, "I wish you'd tip me the wink
how I'm to talk to my hosts. I'm a poor man, but not a poor shot. So I get
asked about a good deal to different places, and as I'm not the sort that
turns on the talking-tap very easily, I often get stuck up. Just as I've
got fairly into the swim with one of them I leave him, and have to think of
talk for quite a different kind of chap, and so on all through the season.
For instance, last December I did three shoots in as many weeks. The first
was with old CALLABY, the rich manufacturer, who's turned sportsman late in
life. I thought he'd like a talk about bimetallism, so I sweated it up a
bit, and started off with a burst as soon as I got a look in. All no go.
Nothing would please him but to talk of birds, and rabbits, and hares, and
farming, and crops, and who was going to be High Sheriff, and all that. So
I got a little left at the first go off.
[Illustration]
"Next week I shot with BLOSSOM, another new friend, who's come into money
lately, after knocking about all over America the greater part of his life.
I tried him with the Chicago Exposition, and ranching as a business for
younger sons; did it delicately, of course, and with any amount of
deference, but he only looked at me blankly, and began talking about the
Bank-rate. After that, I settled with myself I wouldn't talk to any more of
them about things that they might be expected to feel an interest in.
"In the following week I was due at WHICHELLO'S. He's been a perfect
lunatic all his life for music. He got up an orchestra in his nursery,
which came to smash because his younger brother filled all the wind
instruments with soap-suds. Later on he was always scraping, or blowing, or
thumping, scooting about from one concert to another, making expeditions to
the shrine of WAGNER as he called it, composing songs, and symphonies, and
operas, and Heaven only knows what besides. He came into the old place in
Essex when his brother died, about a year ago, and this was his first
pheasant-shoot. I thought to myself, 'If you're anything like these other
Johnnies, it's no good pulling out the music-stop with you.' On the first
morning he seemed a shade anxious at breakfast, and said he was going to
try a new plan of beating his coverts, which it had given him a lot of
trouble to arrange as he wanted. Off we went after breakfast. We had about
half a mile to walk before we got to the first wood, and I kept puzzling my
brains the whole way about this blessed new dodge of beating.
"'Where are the beaters?' I said to WHICHELLO, when we got there, for devil
a bit of one did I see.
"'You'll find them out directly,' says WHICHELLO, looking sly and
triumphant; 'just you stand here, and wait. You'll get some shooting, I
warrant you;' and, with that, he posted the other guns at the far end of
the covert, told me and another chap we were to walk outside, in line with
the beaters, and walked off. Suddenly he gave a whistle. Then what do you
think happened? I'll give you a hundred guesses, and you won't be on it.
Out of a little planting, about fifty yards off the piece we were to shoot,
came marching a troop of rustics, dressed as rustic beaters usually are,
but each of them carrying, in place of the ordinary beater's stick, a
musical instrument of some sort. They were headed by the keeper, who waved
a kind of _bâton_. When they got to our covert, they arranged themselves in
line, and then, on a signal from WHICHELLO, crash, bang! they struck up the
_Tannhäuser March_, and disappeared into the wood.
"'Line up, Trombone!' shouted the keeper--I heard his stentorian roar above
the din--'Come, hurry along with the Bombardon; Ophicleide, you're too far
in front. Keep it going, Clarinets. Now then, all together! What are you up
to, Cymbals? Let 'em have it!' And thus they came banging and booming and
blowing through the covert. The bassoon tripped into a thorn-bush, the
big-drum rolled over the trunk of a tree and smashed his instrument, the
hautboy threw his at an escaping rabbit, while the flute-man walked
straight into a pool of water, and had to be pulled out by the triangle.
But the rest of them got through somehow with that infernal idiot of a
conducting keeper, still backing and twisting and waving like mad in the
front. That was WHICHELLO'S idea of beating his coverts. 'Combining
æsthetic pleasure with sporting pursuits,' he called it. Somehow we had
managed to bring down a brace of pheasants, which, with three rabbits, made
up our total, out of a covert which ought to have yielded ten times as
many.
"I daresay you won't believe this story, but it's true all the same. If you
don't believe it, write to WHICHELLO himself. I never saw anyone half so
pleased as that fool was. He had given up all his time to teaching his
rustics music, with a view to this performance, and had shoved in, as one
of his keepers, a sporting third violin from the Drury Lane orchestra. They
said it was glorious, and congratulated one another all round, with as much
enthusiasm as if they'd repelled a foreign invasion. On the next beat they
played the _March in Scipio_, and after that came a _Pot-Pourri of Popular
Melodies_, arranged by the keeper. They played a selection from _The
Pirates of Penzance_ while we lunched, and took the big wood to the tunes
of '_Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_' and '_Up-rouse ye then, my merry, merry Men!_'
'_Rule Britannia_' and '_Home, Sweet Home_,' played us back to the house. I
never heard such a confounded Babel of brass and wood in all my life. A
German band in a country town couldn't come near it. Curiously enough, we
most of us got urgent letters by next morning's post, summoning us home at
once to attend to business, or to be present at the death-beds of
relatives. I thought you'd like to hear this story, old cock. If you like,
you're very welcome to shove it in your shooting series. I've seen a lot of
rum goes in my life, but this was the rummest of the lot. And don't forget
to let me have a word or two about talking to one's host. I know what I
thought of that maniac WHICHELLO, but I shouldn't have liked to say that to
him.
"Yours to a turn,
A SPORTSMAN."
For the present I must leave this striking letter to the judgment of my
readers. Space fails me to deal with it adequately. On another occasion I
may be able to set down some ideas on the difficult subject suggested by my
polite Correspondent.
* * * * *
THE APPRECIATION OF GOLD.--"Why all this fuss?" writes a Correspondent. "Is
there a difficulty in finding persons who properly appreciate gold? If so,
I, Sir, am not of that number. I will be happy to receive from the Bank any
quantity of sovereigns; and, further, I will undertake to show and honestly
express my appreciation of this generosity on the part of the Bank. Ah! I
should like to possess any number of those 'promises of May.'
"Yours,
A MUNNIE GRUBBER."
* * * * *