TRAVELLING EPISTLE.

W

July, 1848. Well, Dux, the wood-cock hunt came off, as I was about to tell you in my last, according to programme, with the single exception of the sky-scenery overhead. The sun had rolled out of his voluptuous bed, with the saffron-colored sheets, the purple counterpane and the crimson curtains, to be hydropathically "packed" in damp blankets of cloud. If you do not understand the technical meaning of "packing," I cannot, on my conscience, advise you to go to Brattleboro to find out. Just be contented to learn from me, that it consists in being first drowned in cold wet sheets, until, in your middle passage between life and death, you imagine yourself a sea-god; and then being resuscitated by a burial under a feather-bed of vast weight, which makes you wonder whether you have not slipped through the watery domain of Neptune into the warmer kingdom of Pluto below.

Let me take a backward step or two, and inform you that the day, which was to usher in the aforesaid hunt, looked marvellously as if a "drizzle" was contemplated. But when did W. and myself ever

shrink from being made the victims of a practical joke? We never yet were disappointed in a pleasure-hunt, without making it the subject of most unfailing fun for months after it. We never attended a poor concert, a poor theatrical show, or drove a lazy horse, without having far more jovial sport than if we had listened to Catalani, or been spectators of Mrs. Siddons as "Isabella," or whipped up Bucephalus himself. There is a great deal of luxury in some "poor" things. It is only the negative-the neither good nor bad things of life-which tempt the spleen of the practical philosopher. It is so in literature. What infinite amusement can one have over a miserably bad book, and what delicate enjoyment can be derived from a good one! But take a neutral book, too wise to be ridiculed, too stupid to be praised, and not even Goldsmith's "Good-Natured Man," or Dickens' Mark Tapley, could read it with Christian patience or Epicurean complacency.

We applied ourselves first to our wardrobes. The pantaloons, which we dragged out of a musty closet, were not merely" inexpressibles;" they were inconceivable breeches. Made principally on the model of those of Old Grimes-" that good old man"-they bore also a resemblance to those which Dr. Southey put upon the personage, who left his brimstone bed at day-break to visit his little terrestrial farm. Our limbs were easily slipped through them, but there the trouble but began. To adjust them, so as not to show our Junonian ankles with something

over, was impossible. Our coats were well enough, for manifold rents made pockets feasible everywhere, and nothing comes into better play to the sportsman than numerous pockets. With caps, which it was necessary to balance on the tops of our heads, and boots "a world too big" as Shakspeare almost has it, we sallied out, covering our unique uniforms with accoutrements of the chase.

We had scarcely left the door-sill, when with a stiff lurch and a hollow, sonorous cry, "old Dash" threw himself upon his feet and bounded towards us. In another instant, the sprightly Carlo, with his eel-like motions and snake-like head-a worthy scion of old Dash, by the way— was leaping at our very throats. The hunting apparatus and apparel seemed to drive the full-blooded pointers to distraction. It was in vain to stamp and cuff and shout at them. The baying was noisy and rapid enough to awaken all the neighbors. Distressed ambition never uttered such lugubrious and yet inspiring cries. Dash and Carlo-believe me-are dogs of "one idea."

Now do not imagine Dash-although his full-length portrait hangs in W―'s delightful study-to be a miracle of beauty, a paragon of canine perfection and symmetry. Pointers, you know, are never considdered fine-looking by the uninitiated. It requires a hunter's eye to detect the charms of the canis venaticus, as it needs a jockey to admire the long legs and sharp joints of a racer. Ladies, I know, have even an aversion to pointers. I remember well, how E, on the day of our pic-nic, resisted the endearments of a grandson of "Dash" by a stamp of her small foot and an audible assurance that he was one of the least comely of quadrupeds.

Be it understood, then, that Dash is old. Ten summers have gone over him, since, after nine days of blindness,-which, in animal economy, must be designed, I think, to teach dogs to depend on their noses, rather than their eyes,-he opened that intelligent chesnut orb on the side of a barrel. I say "that orb," for Dash has but one eye, which has any practical utility. Age or a sharp brier has turned the other to a dingy white mass, without speculation or symmetry. Nay, the eye that remains, is almost sightless. He cannot distinguish persons at a rod's distance and unquestionably "sees men as trees walking." He is deaf, also. Often have I bawled myself hoarse in endeavoring to keep him in, making noise enough to frighten anything but a woodcock. He is rheumatic, too. Two days successive hunting will lay him up, like a gouty old bachelor, in his kennel, stiff as a post and utterly without spirit. Besides, just at present he bears the mark of a snake's fang on his haunches-a venomous sore, which seems incapable of healing. At times, he is obliged to undergo a course of medical regimen. He is sweated in blankets and plied with physic, although he is

rarely reduced to the indignity of dietetics. In short, he is a relic of the past in his outward appearance; preserving, however, amid all the disadvantages of age the fire of his youth. Still I would prefer him in the thick foliage of July or the clear crisp woods of October to any pointer, (black or white,) setter, springer, or the most aristocratically descended dog in this good State. His years make him venerable, but not useless. His nose is still pre-eminently keen. His scent seems even to have acquired additional vigor from the loss of sight. When thou diest, Dash, thou shalt not be laid in the woods, which thou hast ranged so gallantly. The birds, forever after safer, shall not have the satisfaction of flying, in their summer moonlight revels, which woodcock nightly enjoy, over thy grave. Thou shalt rest thy old bones in a garden, full of flowers; the favorite haunt of those whom thou hast served so lovingly; and thy mild, bright look shall be remembered long; for is it not now immortalized by me?

Carlo we do not take with us. He has too much youthful exuberance to hunt well beside the stoical and practical Dash. Resisting all his caresses and pleading looks, we chain him ingloriously to his kennel: whereupon he stoops so far, that he glides along the ground like a very serpent, begging us to spare him the dishonor. He leaps into his kennel, to find some other mode of egress, tugs at the chain, yelps, in fact would touch any heart but that of an "earnest" hunter in this "earnest" age. If you do not understand that allusion, call on the transcendentalists for light on the subject.

But we must away to the woods, or we shall never get there. The same steed, who trotted across the stage during our dramatization of the pic-nic, was speedily harnessed to that same memorable waggon. As we urged the nag into a gallop along the pleasant road, we met C and E, driving the Deacon's horse at a dashing rate. Of course we stopped, exchanged questions and and answers, and in an instant after consented to follow the light-hearted maidens, who ever and anon were turning around to pay us sarcastic compliments on the elegance of our attire, and drawing desperate pictures of the probable result of our day's sport. E thought we would better be hunting dears and peppering ladies with the small shot of our weak wits. Assuring them, that such "flints" as they would never strike "sparks," we left them at the turn of the road with oft-repeated waves of the hand and the most impressive bows.

We were soon at the scene of our day's operations, safely, although W contrived to turn over the vehicle in driving the horse up a rough bank into the shade. Both of us were thrown out, and I was comfortably strewn "all aboard," with two loaded barrels pointed with great precision at each ear. Regaining our perpendicularity, we started

off for the edge of the wood. Dash yelped loudly, until he came within a few yards of it, when he became as silent as a Grecian phalanx marching to battle. Noiselessly he trotted into the wood, and we pressed after. The ground was most admirable. The birches stood comparatively thick among tufts of alder all along a slope, which ended in a dark and impenetrable marsh. We were occasionally entangled in wild-rose and blackberry bushes, as we entered among the trees. Pressing along a few feet apart, we suddenly saw the first expected signal from Dash. With cringing body and wary step, he was making his way through the dense undergrowth of bushes, when up started the first bird, scarcely seen; but he dropped at the report of the first barrel. "Down, Dash," rurg in a sharp decisive tone from W's lips. The dog sunk down in his footsteps, panting with extended tongue, and looking indifferently around. The barrel was soon reloaded, the nipple capped, the lock full cocked, and the order given, "Find him, Dash, look him up, quick." Eagerly the brute sprung to his task. Thrusting his nose among the weeds, he drew his circles here and there, until with a plunge he snapped at the fallen bird, wagging his tail at an angle of forty-five degrees and attempting to get the game fairly into his mouth. A quick-spoken "here" warned him to drop it, and I bagged the wood-cock. Dash was never learned to "fetch," but he is infallible in finding a dead or wounded bird, over which he will stand, swinging his tail with the gravity of a pendulum, until the game is picked up. No calls will lure him from his watch, any more than the mountain would go to Mahomet. Mahomet was obliged to go to the mountain, and the huntsman must go to Dash.

Again we push on, but not long, before with tail as straight as a ramrod, and stooping head, Dash scarcely moves through a dark clump of alders. Suddenly, he is motionless as a statue. He leans back. One fore-leg is lifted loosely as in expectation. He claps his jaws together again and again with a sort of snort. His eye droops. He seems petrified. It is his dead point, and as,beautiful an one as was known to be made. Our guns are raised to a level with our breasts. Will not the bird start? We move a step or two forward.

straight before us, wildly and swiftly. W

The bird rises and flies manages to deliver the

first shot, and as I was checked by this, his second report sounds before, at the third from my own trusty "Manton," the bird reels through the air to the ground. Dash is down again, in a swampy spot, where he licks up the brackish water. We reload the bird is thrust into W-'s bag, according to our friendly rule of picking up each other's game, and we are putting aside branches, dry and green, on our woodland way.

Another bird rises. Alas! W

fired too soon, for the bird flew

across our path, and the matted shot have left the poor thing neither tail nor back. But who in the world can graduate his nerves so as to take no unfair advantage of a fair shot? I cannot be a stoic with a gun at my shoulder.

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We are off again. "In, Dash, in.” "Here, closer, closer." "Hist, there is a bird here." Sure enough, for a cock rises and flies directly over our heads. One shot rings from each of us, and neither hit. We look at each other inquiringly and burst into a laugh. "W, we ought to be ashamed of that." Yes, but plague on it, who can fire into a bird's face and hit?" The trouble was, that as such shots are rare, the sportsman is not careful on the instant to fire a little in advance of his game. He knows he ought to do so, but he dreads losing the shot altogether.

Again Dash was running to and fro through the alders, occasionally stopping to cast an inquiring look at us as he comes into our close vicinity. Suddenly, we found ourselves at the end of the birch woods and issued into a sombre covert of cedars. The ground under foot was black with moisture. Through it ran a brook, along the muddy borders of which we found many marks of the long bills of woodcock. It was where they had bored, in order to suck up their succulent food. Clearer shooting could not be asked for. Besides the stunted cedars there was no undergrowth around us. Dash all at once acted very strangely. His head was cringing unusually low, and yet he turned literally around, as if he scented a bird at one time before, at another, behind him. He was in a great excitement, and it was soon communicated to me. "He must be deceived," said W, "by the scent of the bird just put into the bag: I wonder why dogs are not often so cheated." My eyes were half-starting from their sockets, amazed and excited as I was by the strange gyrations of Dash. But I well remember saying very low, and through my clenched teeth, "Never!"

Now, notwithstanding the excitement of the occasion, allow me to stop long enough to say, that it was with no ordinary emphasis that 1 uttered that simple word. It was no: spoken with ennui, or pathos, or sentiment, but rather with the accent, which great men, impressed with great convictions, have given to it. So Luther spoke it, when asked to recant before the Diet of Worms. So Chatham emphasized it, when he thrice repeated it before the House of Lords, during the great debate which brought on the great American Revolution. Justice to the animal before me, who had raised expectations which I knew he would not deceive, drew the expression from me. In a moment after, my conscience was clear, satisfied, exultant; when, in answer to three rapid shots, two plump birds fell writhing to the ground together. Dash had been distracted by the double scent. You may be sure that he received a double allowance of applause for his conduct.