RUMPLED FEATHERS

THE CAPTURE

CONSCIENCE MAKES COWARDS OF THE DOGS

THE TRIBUNAL

THE GUARD

TAILPIECE

A SOLEMN CONSULTATION

LOVE DOCUMENTS

SLINGSBY AND PHOEBE

BUTLER WITH BRIDE CUP

THE WEDDING

RURAL ARTILLERY

MASTER SIMON OPENS THE BALL

RECONCILIATION

A MAIDEN CONFESSION

MASTER SIMON’S FINALE

[Illustration:  Tailpiece to Illustrations]

[Illustration:  The Hall]

The hall.

     The ancientest house, and the best for housekeeping in this
     county or the next, and though the master of it write but
     squire, I know no lord like him.

     Merry beggars.

The reader, if he has perused the volumes of the Sketch Book, will probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I once passed a Christmas.  I am now on another visit at the Hall, having been invited to a wedding which is shortly to take place.  The squire’s second son, Guy, a fine, spirited young captain in the army, is about to be married to his father’s ward, the fair Julia Templeton.  A gathering of relations and friends has already commenced, to celebrate the joyful occasion; for the old gentleman is an enemy to quiet, private weddings.  “There is nothing,” he says, “like launching a young couple gaily, and cheering them from the shore; a good outset is half the voyage.”

Before proceeding any farther, I would beg that the squire might not be confounded with that class of hard-riding, fox-hunting gentlemen so often described, and, in fact, so nearly extinct in England.  I use this rural title, partly because it is his universal appellation throughout the neighbourhood, and partly because it saves me the frequent repetition of his name, which is one of those rough old English names at which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.

The squire is, in fact, a lingering specimen of the old English country gentleman; rusticated a little by living almost entirely on his estate, and something of a humourist, as Englishmen are apt to become when they have an opportunity of living in their own way.  I like his hobby passing well, however, which is, a bigoted devotion to old English manners and customs; it jumps a little with my own humour, having as yet a lively and unsated curiosity about the ancient and genuine characteristics of my “fatherland.”