of England. Not one of the team is a particularly good swimmer, and I mention it only to show that anybody, if he will, can learn.

If the drowning man has sunk, you will generally see by the bubbles in still water whereabouts he is. Dive down, and be it noted that the common idea that you cannot open your eyes under water but must go down with them open is utter nonsense. Get the body across one knee, and a kick from the other leg will bring you and him to the surface. A man will not clutch or struggle if he has once sunk, but that is no reason for letting him

sink. A man who has sunk is very nearly dead. Be it noted also that it is utter nonsense to say that a man 'rises three times,' and it is difficult to know how such a very common belief can be so widespread. If you determine to wait till your sunken man rises again you will have to wait till the Resurrection Day.

So far I have referred only to rescuing a struggling man fighting for his life and lost to all sense but his own danger; but it may happen to many of us to be swimming with a friend who gets cramp, or to soldiers to have to get a wounded comrade across a

river. The ordinary mortal would try to swim with the injured man on his back, and would assuredly fail. But nothing can possibly be easier than to help another man who will keep quiet and has his wits about him. If he will turn on his back and place his hands on your shoulders you can swim any distance with him without being in the least incommoded. I am sure no one will believe how easy this is till they have tried it.

No one can say that he will never find himself in the dreadful position of seeing a fellow man drowning before his eyes. At the expense of a few hours given to learning how to save life and keep his own the position would not be so dreadful. Surely this is worth the expenditure of a little time and a very little trouble, and surely this knowledge might with advantage be given to our boys at our public and private schools?

AFTER Mr. Mellish, Master of the Epping Forest Hounds, had been murdered and robbed one evening on his way home from hunting, two boys on horseback used to be sent out with the buckhounds whenever George III. hunted. These boys each carried a brace of horse-pistols, which, at the end of the day, they handed to the yeomen prickers who rode home alongside the King. According to the Druid,' Charles Davis, who was born in January 1788, was one of these boys.

His good looks had given him his start. It is true that his father hunted the King's harriers, and that in any event it was likely that he would have entered the royal service in some capacity or other; but this is Dr. Croft's account of the beginnings of his conspicuous career, as related to him by a very old inhabitant of Bracknell (since deceased) who knew all the circumstances. I give it in his own words:- Young Davis had been to school at Windsor or Eton, and on returning home one day went into the cloisters at the castle, where he was met by the King. Davis was a slim, good-looking lad, and the King took a fancy to him, spoke to him, asked him what he might be going to do, &c. Davis could not say what he was going to do. The King asked him if he would like to go hunting. Davis's father was at

this time huntsman to the King's harriers, kennelled, I think, at Frogmore, or near Windsor, but the King did not know that he was talking to his huntsman's son. The boy said he should like to go hunting very much; the King asked him what his father was. In this way it came about that he was made whip under his father.'

So it was settled, and hunting became Charles Davis's profession when he was about twelve years old, but I think he went on with his schooling. His feeder, George Bartlett, who still lives at Ascot, and whose memory is excellent, tells me that George III. gave him 17. a week and sent him to a school at Windsor,' which probably means that the King kept him on at school for a bit longer before he sent him to the harrier kennels. Stoody, stoody, stoody, always stoodying at thy books. Take, I say, my advice, sir, and stoody fox-hunting,' said Will Freeman (Lord Egremont's kennel huntsman and a great character), on one occasion, to one of Lord Egremont's sons, the course of whose education interfered periodically with his hunting soon after Christmas. Doubtless the young sir' would have been only too pleased to have done so. An open January is a sweet and bitter month to many a schoolboy. But Davis, in spite of such an early apprenticeship to business, must have found time to stoody' both his books and his hunting. A few letters of his which I have seen are certainly the letters of a man of education. They are written in a graceful early Victorian hand, the sentences have turn and precision, proper words fall into their proper places, and there are no mistakes in spelling.

I do not quite know when the harriers were sold. But somewhere about 1813 or 1814 the Duke of Richmond presented his fox-hounds to George III., and Davis went to the Ascot kennels as first whipper-in under Sharpe, his future father-in-law. The Royal Kalendar' states that Charles Davis was groom to the pack in 1816, and first whipper-in in 1817.

The arrival of the Goodwood hounds at Ascot started a new period in stag-hunting. From this time the stag-hunting of the present day may be said to date. The old order changed in many ways. Up till the end of the century George III.'s six yeomen prickers all carried French horns, which, we may be sure, they wound pretty frequently. A sustained chorus of horns. and vociferous hounds greeted the arrival of his Majesty at the meet, sped the deer upon his way when first uncarted, and enlivened all concerned when he was taken. But these ceremonies were now dispensed with, and the term yeoman pricker

fell into disuse. Only the huntsman carried a horn-of the present Robin Hood shape; and a fast fox-hound pack, cram-full of the stout Egremont blood-Jaspers and Dromos, Ledgers and Jumpers-took the place of the old Magpies, and were entered to deer. 'It delights me,' George IV. wrote to Davis in 1822, when, on Sharpe's retirement, he was appointed huntsman, 'to know you have got the hounds. I hope you'll get them so fast that they'll run away from everybody.'

And now let us come to closer quarters with Charles Davis's looks and ways. People who remember him all agree that he was a perfect specimen of a royal servant, a most thorough gentleman, facile princeps in the kennel or over a country, a Bayard in the saddle, a Brummel everywhere else, and so on.

But this won't do, and it is difficult to get at particular things about Davis. I have not been very successful. Close observation, whether a gift or a habit, is comparatively rare.

But I am indebted to Dr. Croft of Bracknell, and to Mr. Cordery of Hall's Farm, Swallowfield, for some valuable personal recollections of Charles Davis. They are both speaking of a man they knew; they are both excellent judges of hunting and of hounds; they are both Berkshire men, famous riders in their day, and saw Davis hunt the roughest part of the Queen's country, the forest and heathlands and the intricate Bracknell country.

I shall give extracts from their letters to me in their own words. Writing to me November 2, 1895, from Bracknell, Dr.