vent that is likely to occur in
the whole term of my sojourn at the Hall.

[Illustration: Stopping to Gather a Flower]

I tell this honestly to the reader, lest when he find me dallying along,
through every-day English scenes, he may hurry ahead, in hopes of
meeting with some marvellous adventure farther on. I invite him, on the
contrary, to ramble gently on with me, as he would saunter out into the
fields, stopping occasionally to gather a flower, or listen to a bird,
or admire a prospect, without any anxiety to arrive at the end of his
career. Should I, however, in the course of my loiterings about this old
mansion, see or hear anything curious, that might serve to vary the
monotony of this every-day life, I shall not fail to report it for the
reader's entertainment.

For freshest wits I know will soon be wearie
Of any book, how grave so e'er it be,
Except it have odd matter, strange and merrie,
Well sauc'd with lies and glared all with glee.[A]

[Footnote A: Mirror for Magistrates.]

[Illustration: Breaking a Pointer]

THE BUSY MAN.

A decayed gentleman, who lives most upon his own mirth and my
master's means, and much good do him with it. He does hold my
master up with his stones, and songs, and catches, and such
tricks, and jigs you would admire--he is with him now.

JOVIAL CREW.

By no one has my return to the Hall been more heartily greeted than by
Mr. Simon Bracebridge, or Master Simon, as the squire most commonly
calls him. I encountered him just as I entered the park, where he was
breaking a pointer, and he received me with all the hospitable
cordiality with which a man welcomes a friend to another one's house. I
have already introduced him to the reader as a brisk old
bachelor-looking little man; the wit and superannuated beau of a large
family connection, and the squire's factotum. I found him, as usual,
full of bustle; with a thousand petty things to do, and persons to
attend to, and in chirping good-humour; for there are few happier beings
than a busy idler; that is to say, a man who is eternally busy about
nothing.

I visited him, the morning after my arrival, in his chamber, which is in
a remote corner of the mansion, as he says he likes to be to himself,
and out of the way. He has fitted it up in his own taste, so that it is
a perfect epitome of an old bachelor's notions of convenience and
arrangement. The furniture is made up of odd pieces