Country Gentleman

"Come to Beautiful Bournemouth!" entice hundreds of advertisements aimed at middle-class Britons who vacation a fortnight every summer at cheap seaside resorts. Yet, near bumptious Bournemouth, there still reside a few country gentlemen who fear God and keep their hunting powder dry as toast. When, last week, early trippers went out to Bournemouth on Good Friday to gawk at army stunt flyers somersaulting in the clouds, some of the adjacent landed gentry sat down and penned letters to the Times in which they used the word "sacrilege," underscoring it twice. Yet there was one who took sterner measures, one Trelawney Dayrell Reed, 38, rich, retired, genteel. . . .

From a thicket Mr. Reed blazed up at one of the stunting airplanes with both barrels of his favorite grouse gun. The plane, flown by squadron leader W. H. Longton, soared on; but on landing he found many a lump of lead in its left wing. Sleuthing detected the culprit. Soon Trelawney Dayrell Reed, Esq. was charged with "feloniously, and of malice aforethought shooting with intent to kill and murder."

"I desire," said Country Gentleman Reed, "to make a statement."

"You better hadn't, sir," said the local magistrate, somewhat overawed. "I wouldn't, if I was you, sir. . . . Come now, I'll make your bail as easy as the law allows, three hunder' pound [$1,450]."