Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1889 — The Perquisites of an Earl. [ARTICLE]

The Perquisites of an Earl.

We had a vety pretty little garden at our lodgings "by the gate of Warwick Castle. It -was green with holly and shrubs, and in it the yellow jasmine bloomed all the winter through. It was sunny and cosy, being sheltered on two sides by the high outer wall of the castle grounds, Over this wall, the castle peacocks, both blue and white, came daily, lending to our small domain a mediaeval air. While to us they were most welcome, to our landlady they brought only disaster, for they foraged on her cauliflowers and in the end destroyed them all. “Why do you not complain of them?” we replied in answer to her complainings. “Why do you not demand pay for damages ?” Enter complaint against the peacocks of an earl f Demand pay for what they had eaten 1 The very thought of so doing overpowered our good landlady. None but a native of that rampant republic, the United States of America, could dream of such a thing! There are drawbacks to the felicity of being an earl’s neighbor. Not only must one submit to the depredations of his peacocks, but of his foxes upon the poultry yard. Our landlady said that, in the part of her native Yorkshire where she was born, hundreds of poultry were killed yearly by the foxes preserved for hunting. The game laws of England are imperious and weigh heavily upon the cottager with his few fowls. — F. A . H., in April Wide Await*.