THE SIX OF SPADES. 159 



a huntsman, because he has won two or three steeple- 

 chases, and can ride eight stone ' with notice.' When 

 there are spectators, he is looking for a big fence, 

 instead of looking at his hounds, and his main object 

 in life appears to be to ' pound the field.' Half the 

 determination to kill his fox which he exhibits in his 

 efforts to kill himself, would make him a great repu- 

 tation. Another thinks himself qualified to carry a 

 horn because his father and his uncle hunted hounds; 

 and a third feels himself quite equal to take command 

 of ' the Quorn,' because he has been for four seasons 

 one of the most incompetent whips in England.* 

 There are plenty of them who can do one thing well; 

 who can do well, or at all events look well, in 

 the saddle who can buy horses, corn, and meal, 

 breed hounds and bring them out in first-rate 

 condition ; but a huntsman ! why, I tell you, Frank, 

 you would have to chuck fifty such chaps as these 

 into a furnace, before you could get enough of the 

 real metal to make one Will Goodall ! " 



"It is very much the same," I rejoined, "with 

 gardeners. A youth has hardly been foreman for a 

 year before he esteems himself competent to preside 

 at Chatsworth. He thinks himself a grape-grower, 

 because he has thinned a few large bunches of grapes ; 

 a plantsman, because he has produced a huge cala- 

 dium or coleus ; a master in arboriculture, because 



* " I've a very unpleasant duty to perform this morning," 

 said a noble and sarcastic master of hounds to Ins friend, as 

 they rode to the meet. " I've an apology to make to my two 

 whips. I told them the other day that they were the two 

 biggest fools in England, and I've been out since with Lord 

 's hounds, and seen two bigger I " 



