298 THE HUNTING FIELD 



on to his gigantic horse, hoisted his cap in the air, 

 which had much the effect of the prolonged flourish 

 of the head-fiddler at the opera. 



A terrible noise was the result ! 



" Now," as Peter Beckford familiarly asks, " where 

 are all your sorrows, and your cares, ye gloomy souls ? 

 Or where your pains and aches, ye complaining ones ? 

 One halloo has dispelled them all." 



Peter's description does not exactly fit our hunt, 

 for we had a hundred halloos at least, and half as 

 many screeches and yells, to say nothing of the dis- 

 cordant brass music of the noble Master and his 

 Huntsman. 



However, the following will do : 



"What a crash they make, and echo seemingly 

 takes pleasure to repeat the sound. The astonished 

 traveller forsakes his road, lured by its melody ; the 

 listening plowman now stops his plow (sic in the 

 original, as the lawyers say), and every distant 

 shepherd neglects his flock, and runs to see him 

 break. What joy ! what eagerness in every face ! " 



And then Peter prigs a bit of poetry from Somer- 

 ville, which we in our turn will prig from Peter, 

 requesting the accommodating reader to turn the 

 sentiment about the forgetfulness of sorrow into 

 Smashgate's total forgetfulness of Cottonwool's 

 dinner : 



"How happy art thou man when thou'rt no more 

 Thyself! When all the pangs that grind thy soul, 

 In rapture and in sweet oblivion lost, 

 Yield a short interval and ease from pain ! " 



We like old Somerville for that idea ; it speaks the 

 sportsman. Sporting writing has this charm, it is 

 sure to tell with sportsmen. Others may turn up 

 their noses (some people's noses seem only made for 

 turning up), and say " what stuff! " but good sporting 

 feeling is sure to tell where it is intended. Who has 



