ON PLAIN AND PEAK 



each individual has (in more senses than one) his 

 hands full ! 



What first strikes an Englishman is the immense 

 number of beaters. On arriving at the scene of 

 operations, he will be astonished to see an army 

 of two or three hundred peasants, mostly barefooted 

 women and girls. A Bohemian woman, though 

 generally the reverse of beautiful, is always a pic- 

 turesque object. Her dress consists of a short skirt 

 of yellow, red, or blue, with a bright-coloured bodice, 

 and a gorgeous handkerchief tied round her head. 

 However dirty and ragged they may be, these pea- 

 sants never look tawdry, for the reason that they 

 always wear their own simple dress, and never the 

 cast-off clothing of their social superiors. 



The multi-hued line, extending over half a mile 

 or more of country, the puffs of white smoke that 

 issue at intervals along its length, the horn-blowing, 

 the shouts of the keepers in their strange-sounding 

 native tongue, the rich green of the beet, through 

 the dense tops of which one tramps knee-deep, the 

 far-stretching horizon, quivering in the fierce heat 

 of a broiling August day altogether form a great 

 contrast to the surroundings in a day's partridge- 

 shooting at home. 



But let us take a glimpse at the winter sport, 

 when hares and not partridges are our game, and 

 the plain lies bare and barren in the nip of the 



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