_seventy-four_, and regularly continued it till she was eighty-three;
scarcely ever missing a dinner, from accident or illness, the whole
time, and never from illness, without the dinner being sent to her own
home. This, by some, may be called ostentation--be it so; it was the way
in which I discovered my pride; and I trust, at all events, that it
was equally laudable with the generous boon of our reverend doctor and
justice, of the "_Old Alderney Cow_." What a history have I heard of
this beneficent, generous, humane, _chaste_, and _pious_ parson, in
consequence of the story of the Old Cow; but, as some of the anecdotes
require confirmation, without which they are almost incredible, I must
pause till the next Number, before I hand them down, together with the
doctor and the old cow, to posterity. I had now made an engagement to go
with some brother sportsmen to Wales, on a grouse shooting party. Our
dogs and guns having been sent on before with our servants, we started,
two of us, in my curricle, and the third person met us at the New
Passage, near Bristol. Unfortunately, we arrived there too late for
the tide; there was only one more boat could pass over the Severn that
night, and that boat was already hired, and waiting to take over the old
Marquis of Lansdown. This was a heavy disappointment to us, as our dogs
were on this side of the water, and would, the next day, have between
twenty and thirty miles to travel, to Pontypool, where we were going
to shoot. The twelfth of August, which was the first day for
grouse-shooting, was on the following day, and therefore our dogs ought
to have gone on some part of the way that very evening, that they might
be fit for the field, or rather the hills, as soon as the shooting
commenced. What was to be done? There was no contending against the
tide. At last I made up my mind to ask the old Marquis to allow the dogs
and a servant to pass over with him. My companions declined joining
in the application, as they were fearful that he would take it as an
insult; and, at all events, there was little chance of his compliance,