England -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Hunting stories
The papers themselves were not very flourishing-looking concerns, the
wide-spread paragraphs, the staring type, the catching advertisements,
forming a curious contrast to the close packing of _The Times_. The 'Gutta
Percha Company,' 'Locock's Female Pills,' 'Keating's Cough Lozenges,' and
the 'Triumphs of Medicine,' all with staring woodcuts and royal arms,
occupied conspicuous places in every paper. A new advertisement was a
novelty. However, the two papers answered a great deal better than either
did singly, and any lack of matter was easily supplied from the magazines
and new books. In this department, indeed, in the department of elegant
light literature generally, Mr. Grimes was ably assisted by his eldest
daughter, Lucy, a young lady of a certain age--say liberal thirty--an
ardent Bloomer--with a considerable taste for sentimental poetry, with
which she generally filled the poet's corner. This assistance enabled
Grimes to look after his auctioneering, bleaching, and paper-hanging
concerns, and it so happened that when the foregoing run arrived at the
office he, having seen the next paper ready for press, had gone to Mr.
Vosper's, some ten miles off, to paper his drawing-room, consequently the
duties of deciding upon its publication devolved on the Bloomer. Now, she
was a most refined, puritanical young woman, full of sentiment and
elegance, with a strong objection to what she considered the inhumanities
of the chase. At first she was for rejecting the article altogether, and
had it been a run with the Tinglebury Harriers, or even, we believe, with
Lord Scamperdale's hounds, she would have consigned it to the 'Balaam box,'
but seeing it was with Mr. Puffington's hounds, whose house they had
papered, and who advertised with them, she condescended to read it; and
though her delicacy was shocked at encountering the word 'stunning' at the
outset, and also at the term 'ravishing scent' farther on, she nevertheless
sent the manuscript to the compositors, after making such alterations and
corrections as she thought would fit it for eyes polite. The consequence
was that the article appeared in the following form, though whether all the
absurdities were owing to Miss Lucy's corrections, or the carelessness of
the writer, or the printers, had anything to do with it, we are not able to
say. The errors, some of them arising from the mere alteration or
substitution of a letter, will strike a sporting more than a general
reader. Thus it appeared in the middle of the third sheet of the
_Swillingford Patriot_:
SPLENDID RUN WITH MR. PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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