Folks who had hares discovered snares-- His course they could not stop: No barber he, and yet he made Their hares a perfect crop. To pheasant he was such a foe, He tried the keeper’s nerves; They swore he never seem’d to have _Jam_ satis of _preserves_. The Shooter went to beat, and found No sporting worth a pin, Unless he tried the _covers_ made Of silver, plate, or tin. In Kent the game was little worth, In Surrey not a button; The Speaker said he often tried The _Manors_ about _Sutton_. No county from his tricks was safe: In each he tried his lucks, And when the keepers were in _Beds_, He often was at _Bucks_. And when he went to _Bucks_, alas! They always came to _Herts_; And even _Oxon_ used to wish That he had his deserts. But going to his usual _Hants_, Old _Cheshire_ laid his plots: He got entrapp’d by legal _Berks_, And lost his life in _Notts_. [Illustration: LUNAR CAUSTIC.] SKETCHES ON THE ROAD. THE SUDDEN DEATH. THERE are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels, they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor. That was precisely Miss Norman’s dilemma. If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he had drawn the Lady in daily airings to a point just short of the Binn Gate;--because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum which Miss Norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a limited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to walk every inch of it, to her own house. But Miss Norman never walked. [Illustration: “TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.”]