Over the closed eyes, panting flank, and exhausted frame of this tiny, innocent, and yet seduced orphan, who had never known its father, and has just lost its mother, we will venture to offer to our readers a very few remarks on the strange dissolving view that has just vanished, or rather galloped, from their sight.
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"It's just," said Andrew Fairservice to Frank Osbaldistone, "amaist as silly as our auld daft laird here and his gomerils o' sons, wi' his huntsmen and his hounds, and his hunting cattle and horns, riding haill days after a bit beast that winna weigh sax punds when they hae catched it."
To the foregoing observation it might also have been added, that in the extraordinary exertions we have described, the pleasures enjoyed by the "bit beast" in being hunted, when compared with those of the two or three hundred animals, human, equine, and canine, that are hunting him, are as disproportionate as is his weight when compared to the sum total of theirs.
"No!" said the haughty Countess of —— to an aged huntsman, who, cap in hand, had humbly invited her ladyship to do him the honour to come and see his hounds, "No! I dislike everything belonging to hunting—it is so cruel."
"Cruel!!" replied the old man, with apparent astonishment, "why, my lady, it can't possibly be cruel, for," logically holding up three fingers in succession,
"We all knows that the gentlemen like it,
"And we all knows that the hosses like it,
"And we all knows that the hounds like it,
"And," after a long pause, "none on us, my lady, can know for certain, that the foxes don't like it."
It may strongly be suspected, however, that they do not enjoy being hunted to death, and consequently that161 the operation, whenever and wherever it is performed, is, to a certain degree, an act of cruelty; which it is only hypocritical to vindicate by pretending to argue that Puggy has been sentenced to death to expiate his sins; for if, instead of robbing a hen roost, it had been his habit to come in all weathers secretly to sit on its nests to help and hatch the chickens, "The Times" newspaper would have advertised "hunting appointments" which would have been as numerously attended,—the hounds would have thrown off with the same punctuality,—and men and horses would have r............