RIDING TO HOUNDS 13 



hath rather more than * some shallow spirit of judgment,' so 

 surely does every man who hunts feel serenely confident that, 

 given the start, the horse, or whatever he may deem to be the 

 embodiment of opportunity, he is as capable of showing the 



trick to the d d Quornites, or to any other hunt in the United 



Kingdom, as was erstwhile the self-assertive Dick of poetic 

 memory. Alas ! how many of us would fall in our own esti- 

 mation could we but realise the fact that in truth we belong to 

 the majority (some seventy per cent.) who, if by accident left 

 alone in their glory with hounds running hard, could not live 

 with them four fields, not even if four open gates on the line 

 spread wide their friendly portals to indicate the way we should 

 go ; while, for taking the first bloom off a fence, the minority 

 must shrink by at least another half score. 



However, with the best intentions, we cannot all be first. 

 There are, luckily, many ways of riding to hounds, and so long 

 as each exponent of the various phases is satisfied that his 

 method is the correct one, who shall cavil at him or say him nay ? 

 He hunts for his own pleasure, and it is presumable that after 

 his own fashion he is pleased. But in dealing with these dif- 

 ferent styles we can hardly be blamed for following what seems 

 to be an order of natural selection, by giving preference in 

 these pages to the front-rank men the Uhlans of the cavalry 

 who pursue the sport declared by Mr. Jorrocks to be the image 

 of war, with a liberal discount for absence of guilt and diminu- 

 tion of danger. 



It has often been remarked even in Leicestershire and 

 Northamptonshire, those centres of attraction to which yearly 

 gravitate the very pick and flower of our flying horsemen that 

 when hounds have been running straight with a breast-high scent 

 for some ten minutes, not more than a dozen or fifteen riders, 

 out of the immense field which congregated at the meet, are 

 ever seen really on terms with the pack, each man cutting out 

 his own work, and forming the apex of a small pyramid of 

 followers, or, to use a simile which must not be deemed un- 

 flattering, like the leading wild goose of a flight. So well is 



