e
pastime, which, at any rate, had this advantage as far as I was
personally concerned, that it gave me a thundering appetite. The ferrets
which one of the attendants always carried in a bag had a peculiar
fascination for me, with their long fur, their white, shiny teeth, their
little sparkling black eyes. The ferret is popped into the hole in which
the rabbit is hidden. Poor little animal, he is between the devil and
the deep sea. He waits in his hole till he can stand it no longer, but
there is no way of escape for him out. There are the men, with their
guns and the dogs eager for the fun. Ah! it is soon over, and this is
often the way of the world.

To us in that Suffolk village the sports of big schools and more
ambitious lads were unknown. For us there was no cricket or football,
except on rare occasions, when we had an importation of juveniles in the
house, but I don't know that we were much the better for that. We
trundled the hoop, and raced one with another, and that is capital
exercise. We played hopscotch, which is good training for the calves of
the legs. We had bows and arrows and stilts, and in the autumn--when we
could get into the fields--we built and flew kites, kites which we had to
make ourselves. If there was an ancient sandpit in the neighbourhood how
we loved to explore its depths, and climb its heights, and in the
freshness of the early spring what a joy it was to explore the hedges, or
the trees of the neighbouring park, when the gamekeepers happened to be
out of sight in search of birds' nests and eggs; and in the long winter
evenings what a delight it was to read of the past, though it was in the
dry pages of Rollin, or to glow over the poems of Cowper. We were, it is
true, a serious family. We had family prayers. No wine but that known
as gingerbeer honoured the paternal hospitable board. Grog I never saw
in any shape. A bit of gingerbread and a glass of water formed our
evening meal. Oh, at Christmas what games we had of snap-dragon and
blind man's buff. I always felt small when a boy from Cockneydom
appeared amongst us, and that I hold to be the chief drawback of such a
bringing up as ours was. The battle of life is best fought by the
cheeky. It does not do to be too humble and retiring. Baron Trench
owned to a too great consciousness of innate worth. It gave him, he
writes, a too great degree of pride. That is bad, but not so bad as the
reverse--that feeling of humili