"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."