As the Squire is very careful in collecting and
preserving all family reliques, the Hall is full of remembrances of
the kind. In looking about the establishment, I can picture to myself
the characters and habits that have prevailed at different eras of the
family history. I have mentioned, on a former occasion, the armour of
the crusader which hangs up in the Hall. There are also several
jack-boots, with enormously thick soles and high heels, that belonged
to a set of cavaliers, who filled the Hall with the din and stir of
arms during the time of the Covenanters. A number of enormous drinking
vessels of antique fashion, with huge Venice glasses, and
green-hock-glasses, with the apostles in relief on them, remain as
monuments of a generation or two of hard livers, that led a life of
roaring revelry, and first introduced the gout into the family.
I shall pass over several more such indications of temporary tastes of
the Squire's predecessors; but I cannot forbear to notice a pair of
antlers in the great hall, which is one of the trophies of a
hard-riding squire of former times, who was the Nimrod of these parts.
There are many traditions of his wonderful feats in hunting still
existing, which are related by old Christy, the huntsman, who gets
exceedingly nettled if they are in the least doubted.
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