MR. SAM HAMES 17 



obligations, the owner will rarely be able to replace it satis- 

 factorily. 



The good manners of Mr. Hames' hunters are surpassed 

 only by his own. They may contradict you ; but he, never. 

 He always agrees with me, and thereby increases the high 

 opinion I have for his judgment. If I remark, when he 

 orders a horse to be pulled out for my inspection, that the 

 animal's head is a bit plain, he replies: "You are quite 

 right ; but he carries it so well, that it looks downright hand- 

 some when he is mounted." On my hinting that the 

 shoulders of the proposed conveyance are somewhat thick, 

 Mr. Hames at once grants that from the ground they appear 

 to have a suspicion of coarseness, but that if I get into the 

 saddle and send the animal along, I will find he uses them to 

 perfection. The good opinion I possess of the excellence of 

 my " hands " (where is the riding man that is not infected 

 with the same delusion ?) has been greatly increased since I 

 began to buy horses from Mr. Hames. I once wrote to him 

 saying that my wife and I were going over to see him, as I 

 wanted to try a hack which he had written to me about, and 

 which I required for a foreign customer who has a weakness 

 for la haute ecole. Mr. Hames sent a trap to the station to 

 meet us, with a note inviting us to his house to have lunch, 

 and regretting that he could not join us, as he had some work 

 which would keep "him engaged for an hour or so. As ladies 

 have proverbially no palate, I did not particularly notice 

 what my wife took, but I did myself pretty well on a bottle 

 of Haut Sauterne, some old Port, and a fair share of a 

 specially fine brand of green Cura^oa. Having driven down 

 to the stables, I mounted the hack and jogged off to the field, 

 to which our entertainer and my wife had preceded me in a 

 trap. Instead of pulling the animal about and making it 

 give a bad show, I foolishly " cocked my dock,'' and put in a 

 lot of nice work in getting the mare to change her leg, and 

 3 



