The Sir Roger de Coverley PapersSteele, Richard, Sir
General
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers
Steele, Richard, Sir
English essays
My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in
business of this kind, and has hung several parts of his
house with the trophies of his former labours. The walls
of his great hall are covered with the horns of several
kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he (119: 5)
thinks the most valuable furniture of his house, as they
afford him frequent topics of discourse, and show that
he has not been idle. At the lower end of the hall is
a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother
ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the knight (10)
looks upon it with great satisfaction, because it seems he
was but nine years old when his dog killed him.[78] A little
room adjoining to the hall is a kind of arsenal filled with
guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the
knight has made great havoc in the woods, and destroyed (15)
many thousands of pheasants, partridges, and woodcocks.
His stable doors are patched with noses that belonged
to foxes of the knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger
showed me one of them, that for distinction sake has a
brass nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen (20)
hours' riding, carried him through half a dozen counties,
killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his
dogs. This the knight looks upon as one of the greatest
exploits of his life. The perverse widow, whom I have
given some account of, was the death of several foxes; (25)
for Sir Roger has told me that in the course of his amours
he patched the western door of his stable. Whenever
the widow was cruel, the foxes were sure to pay for it.
In proportion as his passion for the widow abated and
old age came on, he left off fox-hunting; but a hare is
not yet safe that sits within ten miles of his house.
[78] The otter or Sir Roger? Recast the sentence.
There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend
to my readers of both sexes as this of riding, as (120: 5)
there is none which so much conduces to health, and is
every way accommodated to the body, according to the
idea which I have given of it. Dr. Sydenham is very
lavish in its praises; and if the English reader will see
the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may (10)
find them in a book published not many years since,
under the title of the _Medicina Gymnastica_.
For my own part, when I am in town, for want of these
opportunities I exercise myself an hour every morning
upon a dumb-bell that is placed in a corner of my room, (15)
and pleases me the more because it does everything I
require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady
and her daughters are so well acquainted with my hours
of exercise, that they never come into my room to disturb
me whilst I am ringing. (20)
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