One opportunity is afforded the European who is neither a soldier nor
a hotel cashier to dress himself up in comic-opera clothes--and that is
when he a-hunting goes. An American going hunting puts on his oldest
and most serviceable clothes--a European his giddiest, gayest, gladdest
regalia. We were so favored by gracious circumstances as to behold
several Englishmen suitably attired for the chase, and we noted that the
conventional morning costume of an English gentleman expecting to call
informally on a pheasant or something during the course of the forenoon
consisted, in the main, of a perfect dear of a Norfolk jacket, all over
plaits and pockets, with large leather buttons like oak-galls adhering
thickly to it, with a belt high up under the arms and a saucy tail
sticking out behind; knee-breeches; a high stock collar; shin-high
leggings of buff or white, and a special hat--a truly adorable
confection by the world's leading he-milliner.
If you dared to wear such an outfit afield in America the very
dickeybirds would fall into fits as you passed--the chipmunks would lean
out of the trees and just naturally laugh you to death! But in a land
where the woodlands are well-kept groves, and the undergrowth, instead
of being weedy and briery, is sweet-scented fern and gorse and bracken,
I suppose it is all eminently correct.
Thus appareled the Englishman goes to Scotland to shoot the grouse, the
gillie, the heather cock, the niblick, the haggis and other Scotch game.
Thus appareled he ranges the preserves of his own fat, fair shires in
ardent pursuit of the English rabbit, which pretty nearly corresponds to
the guinea pig, but is not so ferocious; and the English hare, which
is first cousin to our molly cottontail; and the English pheasant--but
particularly the pheasant.
There was great excitement while we were in England concerning the
pheasants. Either the pheasants were preying on the mangel-wurzels or
the mangel-wurzels were preying on the pheasants. At any rate it had
something to do with the Land Bill--practically everything that happens
in England has something to do with the Land Bill--and Lloyd George was
in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it
and altogether there was a great pother over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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