PELTED WITH RABBIT-SKINS.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 21, 2 January 1907, Page 5

PELTED WITH RABBIT-SKINS.

It happened in South Shropshire in 1865 that Sir Baldwin Leighton had recently prosecuted a man for poaching rabbits on his estate, and brother magistrates on the bench bestowed upon the hapless sportsman the heaviest legal penalty. The case created an outburst of. public indignation that was by no means cgnfinod to Shropshire. The tumult of cheering and counter-cheering by the mob in front of the hustings at Church Stretton was so incessant that the only way of performing my task of obtaining a note of Sir Baldwin’s speech was to stand close by him. This I suceeded in doing. But my professional satisfaction was short-lived.

Hardly had the respected magnate opened his mouth to speak than the air was darkened by a cloud of rab-bit-skinß aimed at the candidate. They fell among the just and the unjust. In the former category -on this occasion I ranked myself. It seemed as if all the spare rabbit-skins in the country had joined in this first flight But the supply was apparently unlimited. Whenever Sir Baldwin opened his mouth to continue his speech, a rabbit-skin was, so to speak, dropped into it. The circumstances were untoward for a full report of the fragmentary speech. At the best of times, when it was necessary to take a shorthand note, I had keen sympathy with David Copperfteid in his efforts to decipher hieroglyphs blithely jotted down. But Pitman's phonography cum ambient rabbit-skins was too much, and Sir Baldwin's speech, prolonged through an uproarious hour, remained unreported.W, Lucy, in the