"When your master or lady comes home, and wants a servant who happens to be abroad, your answer must be, that he had but just that minute stepped out, being sent for by a cousin who was dying. When you are chidden for a fault, as you go out of the room mutter loud enough to be plainly heard. "When your lady sends for you to her chamber to give you orders, be sure to stand at the door and keep it open, fiddling with the lock all the while she is talking to you. "When you want proper instruments for any work you are about, use all expedients you can invent. For instance, if the poker be out of the way, stir the fire with the tongs; if the tongs be not at hand, use the muzzle of the bellows, the wrong end of the shovel, or the handle of the fire-brush. If you want paper to singe a fowl, tear the first book you see about the house. Wipe your shoes, for want of a clout, on the bottom of a curtain or a damask napkin. "There are several ways of putting out a candle, and you ought to be instructed in them all: you may run the candle-end against the wainscot, which puts the snuff out immediately; you may lay it on the ground and tread the snuff out with your foot; you may hold it upside down until it is choked in its own grease, or cram it into the socket of the candlestick; you may whirl it round in your hand till it goes out. "Clean your plate, wipe your knives, and rub the dirty tables with the napkins and tablecloths used that day, for it is but one washing. "When a butler cleans the plate, leave the whiting plainly to be seen in all the chinks, for fear your lady should not believe you had cleaned it. "You need not wipe your knife to cut bread for the table, because in cutting a slice or two it will wipe itself. "A butler must always put his finger into every bottle to feel whether it be full. "Whet the backs of your knives until they are as sharp as the edge, that when gentlemen find them blunt on one side they may try the other. "Cooks should scrape the bottom of pots and kettles with a silver spoon, for fear of giving them a taste of copper. "Get three or four charwomen to attend you constantly in the kitchen, whom you pay with the broken meat, a few coals, and all the cinders. "Never make use of a spoon in anything that you can do with your hands, for fear of wearing out your master's plate. "In roasting and boiling use none but the large coals, and save the small ones for the fires above stairs." And so on. If the old servants had their merits, they had also their demerits. Have they not bequeathed the latter to their successors, and carried away their merits with them into a better world? [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. THE HUNT. [Illustration] The genuine Englishman loves a hunt, loves sport, above everything else; I do not mean only those who can afford to ride and shoot, but every Englishman born and bred in the country.