CHAPTER XIII 



AS HUNTSMAN — LEAVES FROM HIS HUNTING DIARIES 



When, after his marriage with Lady Yarborough in 1881, my 

 brother hunted the dog pack of the Brocklesby Hounds, it was 

 in no amateurish spirit that he entered upon and carried out 

 these duties. Hunting men will readily understand by the 

 following leaves which I quote from the Sporting Diaries he 

 kept during the four years he hunted the Brocklesby dog 

 pack, and will see from them, that although he was a man who 

 detested writing down any of his experiences, he gave his mind 

 thoroughly to the work in hand. I am told he showed 

 some of the finest sport that has ever been chronicled by this 

 celebrated old pack of hounds. A man of few words as far as 

 writing was concerned, the entries he has made show the care 

 with which he watched the working of hounds, and the interest 

 he took in all the details of their work. As to the care and 

 trouble he took over the breeding and rearing of the Hounds, 

 one has only to go through his papers, as I have been privi- 

 leged to do, and read his copious notes on the subject, to see 

 what minute thought he bestowed on the business. Scores of 

 kennel books with his notes and comments show how he had 

 mastered this problem so dear to him for many years. In 

 fact, from the time he was twenty-eight years of age to the 

 time of his death at sixty-five, he must have studied con- 

 tinuously the thousand and one apparently small matters which 



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