171: 6. Foil the scent. When a variety of game is started, and their trails cross, the dogs become confused and cannot follow any one.
171: 14. My love of solitude, taciturnity. See paper I of this volume.
171: 28. White Witch. Called "white" because doing good; most witches were believed to practise a black art.
[172]: 10. Some discarded Whig. Discarded, or he would not have been staying in the country among Tories.
[173]: 19. Stories of a cock and a bull. Any idle or absurd story. The phrase in this form or in the other now more common, "a cock-and-bull story," has been common in English for nearly three hundred years; but its origin is not known.
173: 25. Make every mother's son of us Commonwealth's men. Sir Andrew Freeport, it will be remembered, was a pronounced Whig, and the Whigs were charged with having inherited the doctrines and traditions of the Commonwealth.
XXV. The Journey to London
Motto. "We call that man impertinent who does not see what the occasion demands, or talks too much, or makes a display of himself, or does not have regard for the company he is in."—Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 4.
[174]: 5. Ready for the stage-coach. By 1710 coaches ran regularly between London and most larger towns in England. The best were called "flying-coaches," were drawn by six horses, and sometimes made eighty miles a day. They did not run at night. The fare was about three pence the mile.