priests come for money. They are all of the
peasant class, without education or refinement.
They are very humble in the presence of the
great man, who is rather brusque and impatient
with them; but they are persistent and they
get what they came for, though my friend begins
to wince and look grave at the demands made
on him. We dine quite alone, no guest or
civilised being within hail anywhere; and
by-and-by an old woman, who was my friend's
nurse, comes in with a bottle of some home-made
medicine, for the making of which she
is famous. We have some talk with her,
and she takes away a present and some
kind words. Towards nine o'clock we go to
bed tired out, weary with travel, dazed by the
wind.

The next morning I find the colonel's brother,
who is one of his sub-agents on another part of
the estate, waiting for me in a britzka; and we
are soon galloping through the brisk morning
air towards the quarters of the wolves.
Russian gentlemen have little taste for sport, and
my friend remains at home to settle accounts
with his agent. Nevertheless, great preparations
have been made to ensure us success. All
the country side are out; perhaps a hundred
beaters with sticks, and a score of yeomen on
horseback with guns. We have met on the
borders of a large forest. Here and there are
beehives about; and the sale of honey appears
a considerable branch of local trade. The
beaters are soon lost in the wood, and the sportsmen
are posted at convenient places to wait for
the game. We hear the cries and shouts of the
country people in the distance, but hour after
hour passes away and no wolves appear. Just
as I am growing drowsy, however, and have
almost ceased to think of them at all, a large
grey wolf comes through the wood at a slouching
trot, stops suddenly on the borders of a
ditch, and looks across at me. I have time to
take up my gun leisurely enough and fire. When
the smoke has cleared away the wolf has
disappeared. It was almost impossible, however, to
have missed him, so we go in pursuit and find
the beast a few yards off, hidden in some
brushwood, but quite dead. Though we wait many
hours after this, some hundred men besides
horses and servants, we see no more wolves nor
any other living thing, but a single wild cat;
and so when the evening comes on we scamper
homewards again. It seems a poor day's sport
for so many people; but although the peasantry
cannot be induced to work, they are always
glad of any excuse for throwing away their
time; and appear quite content to have stood
about in the wind all day doing nothing. For
my own part I am rather proud of having shot
my first wolf, and call out rather excitedly to
my friend to come and look at it. As he does
not answer I go into the house to search for
him, and find him enjoying the nap of solitude and
boredom. He, too, is pleased by my marksmanship,
and wakes up briskly to witness its result.
I am certainly not gone five minutes; but
when I return to the britzka, where I left my
game, it is stolen. No wonder: the skin,
observes my friend briefly, is worth about three
roubles.

DAVID GARRICK.

EARLY in 1716, Peter Garrick, a lieutenant
of dragoons, serving in Colonel James Tyrrel's
regiment, came on recruiting service to Hereford.
He put up at the Angel Inn, an old timber-framed
house (burned down a hundred years
ago), where, on the 19th of February, in this
same year of 1716, his wife gave birth to a
son—their third child—known afterwards to
fame as David Garrick, the actor.

This future Roscius was not altogether an
Englishman. His grandfather, the founder of
the family so far as England was concerned, was
originally De la Garrigue, a Huguenot of
Bordeaux, forced to fly from France in 1685, to
escape the storm then sweeping over the
reformed church; Madame de la Garrigue, or
Garric, following some months later, hid in the
hold of a small fourteen-ton skiff, belonging
to one Peter Cock, of Guernsey. In that
piteous plight she remained a month, tossed
about in heavy gales and fearful tempests, in
peril of her life by shipwreck on the one hand,
or by ecclesiastical zeal on the other, should
she fall into the hands of the authorities. It
was not until a year and a half after their own
flight that they received their little son Peter,
the future lieutenant of dragoons, and our
David's father; the persecution of the moment
extending even to babes and sucklings, on the
principle of crushing the eggs of the cockatrice
betimes. In fulness of time Peter made a
love-match; about as imprudent as love-matches
generally are. He married Arabella, the daughter
of a certain Reverend Mr. Clough, a vicar-choral
of Lichfield, and herself the daughter of
an Irish mother; and thus in little David's
veins were mingled the three streams of French,
Irish, and English blood, affording good tracking-
ground to the ethnologist, and first-rate elements
for dramatic talent and steady success.

That dramatic talent soon began to show
itself; for, when only eleven years of age,
David enrolled a small company of his own,
drilling them carefully, and finally giving, "in
the large room," Farquhar's Recruiting Officer,
keeping the part of Sergeant Kite for himself.
He gave that of the Chambermaid to one of his
sisters. Soon after this first amateur performance
David was sent off to an uncle, a wine-merchant
in Lisbon, where he remained but a short
time; the details of a clerk's duties suiting ill
with one whom nothing short of the excitement
and vivacity of the stage would have satisfied.
It was well for him and his, and all of us, that
he disliked the wine trade, and came back to
England. Had he been less restless and determined,
"brands" and "vintages" would have
cost the world dear. To his family his return
was an immense boon; for in 1731, Peter, now
Captain Garrick, went off to Gibraltar, leaving