



Produced by David Widger






THE LONG HILLSIDE

A CHRISTMAS HARE-HUNT IN OLD VIRGINIA

By Thomas Nelson Page

Charles Scribner's Sons New York, 1908

Copyright, 1891, 1904, 1906




I

There do not seem to be as many hares now as there used to be when I was
a boy. Then the "old fields" and branch-bottoms used to be full of them.
They were peculiarly our game; I mean we used to consider that they
belonged to us boys. They were rather scorned by the "gentlemen," by
which was meant the grown-up gentlemen, who shot partridges over the
pointers, and only picked up a hare when she got in their way. And the
<DW64>s used to catch them in traps or "gums," which were traps made of
hollow gum-tree logs. But we boys were the hare-hunters. They were our
property from our childhood; just as much, we considered, as "Bruno" and
"Don," the beautiful "crack" pointers, with their brown eyes and satiny
ears and coats, were "the gentlemen's."

The <DW64>s used to set traps all the Fall and Winter, an