Punch (90.1886)

24 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [January 9, 1886.

HUNTING PUZZLES.

■ I

FOUND! Trying to post himself up m the Geography. "No Name!" 'GONE AWAY!" And where are we now?

LETTERS OE AN EXPERIMENTALIST.

doing without the butcher.

Sir,—All sagacious householders will have experienced lively
satisfaction at the fact that the farmers of Bedfordshire have been
dispensing with the services of the extortionate Middleman, and
undertaken the direct supply of Meat themselves. I am nothing if
not an Experimentalist, and this is what I did:—

I secured, last week, by negotiation with a farmer in one of the
Midland Counties, a " beast," that was duly delivered into my hands
at the Great Northern Station, King's Cross, where, accompanied by
a friend who had agreed to take a hind quarter, and who kindly
volunteered to assist me in the task of driving it home to my residence
at Walham Green, I repaired to meet it as arranged._ We had
selected the evening as the most convenient and fitting time for our
first essay at cattle-driving, and having attached a rope to the
creature's neck, we got, with the exception of having become
entangled for some short time round a lamp-post, on the whole,
fairly out of the station. Our first difficulty occurred in the Euston
Road, where the beast, a fine full-grown ox, who seemed remarkably
fresh after its journey, apparently dazzled by the illumination, made
a dash into a chemist's shop, from which, after considerable commo-
tion, we managed, by the aid of two policemen, and giving it a drink
of soda-water in a pail, to remove it backwards on to the pavement.

Here we had pretty plain sailing for a time, and managed by hal-
looing well to people ahead, and by keeping to the back streets, to
get on with nothing much beyond the upsetting of an apple-stall
and a wayfarer or two, and frightening an old woman in the Bromp-
ton Road into hysterics. But here again our beast gave us some
trouble, declining to move, until we at last resolved that, if the worst
came to worst, we would try to put it on the top of a four-wheeler.
On attempting this, however, it made a sudden bolt into the interior
of a Fulham omnibus. The vehicle being fairly full, the occurrence
naturally occasioned some protest from the passengers, but the creature
could not be induced to retire, and so, by paying for seven inside places,
and giving my name and address for a summons to the conductor, I
managed to convey it to my house-door, where, with the assistance
of all the outside passengers, who lent a hand at its tail, we obliged
it, after a vigorous and prolonged effort, ultimately to dismount.

It was therefore close upon half-past one o'clock in the morning
before I managed to get it up the steps into the hall of my house.
It being a wet night, it became a question whether I should drive it
on into the back garden, where I had intended to put it up prior to
the " killing " the next morning, or allow it to have a shake-down in
a temporary bed of old newspapers in the back study; but as it
seemed inclined to be frisky, and did, in fact, in a few minutes,
clear the hall of the weather-glass, letter-box, and umbrella-stand,
I decided on the former, and by frightening it by banging it with a
tea-tray, finally, after a struggle of two hours and a half, succeeded
in driving it sideways down the garden-steps into its appointed
quarters, where I left it rolling on the flower-beds, and bellowing in
a way that must, I fear, have disturbed the neighbourhood.

The next morning brought annoyance with it, in the shape of a
letter from the friend who had undertaken to take half the beast
off my hands, and "to send some one to skin it and joint it properly
on the premises." He had written to me, backing out of the whole
thing, and saying, on second thoughts, be did not " see his way to
getting through a fortnight's beef all at once." This was a most
unpleasant surprise; but as the carpenter, whom I had sent round
for to superintend and execute the killing " was waiting for orders,
I hardly knew what to decide. I could scarcely face such an over-
whelming quantity of beef as would suddenly come on my hands ;
and yet the state of the garden seemed to point to immediate action,
as all the beds and paths were trodden into a common pulp. So I
gave the order to the carpenter to proceed with his business.

After I had been waiting nervously for half-an-hour to hear what
he had done, he came in to say he did not think he could manage it.
After some delay, I borrowed a double-barrelled rifle, and managed,
at the ninth shot, to give the creature its quietus.

Of the subsequent proceedings I have little to say beyond that I
would, on the whole, counsel no one in future to "kill" on the
premises. You cannot with any comfort turn them into an
amateur slaughter-house. As to the meat, though we sent out fifty
Christmas Cards mentioning it to friends, we had so much of it on
our hands, that we had to make a hurried present of nearly the
whole of it to the Parish Authorities. As an Experimentalist, I am
convinced that in London we are not yet prepared to do without the
butcher. One Who Doesn't Quite Know.

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