A RECESS. 67 



up vacancies has been found a matter of almost insurmountable 

 •difficulty ; and hence many new purchases have scarcely issued 

 from the initiatory course of treatment to which grooms deem 

 it invariably necessary to subject a fresh comer before he may 

 be put to the test of the covert side. Up to present date the 

 snow — arriving as it did, before the frost — has at least retained 

 us the privilege of keeping horses in work ; so you may get on 

 the fresh comer's back and send him round the grass fields to 

 your heart's content and his advantage. For the turf is well 

 protected ; and the snow serves not only to shield the ground 

 from frost, but to bring every muscle of your horse into play as 

 he gallops. Thus, a morning might be more unprofitably — and 

 far less pleasantly — spent, than in opening in person the pipes 

 and pores of your horses, that otherwise would only be doing 

 their sheeted and hooded drudgery — at an hour when your own 

 chief care is to keep your nose sufficiently under the bedclothes 

 to avoid frost-bite. The strong sharp exercise arouses a sjunpa- 

 thetic warmth of body and spirit, for which you will seek in 

 vain from the sensation columns of the daily papers, or from an 

 undue and ill-deserved luncheon. There is a keenness about 

 the fog, as you rush through it, that sends a glow into veins 

 declining to flow freely under inspiration of mere food and 

 warmth : there is lively sympathy to be got — if startling and 

 trying — from a new saddle and a horse that from sheer high 

 spirits would gladly flick out of his skin. 



Melton is of course virtually empty during this indefinite 

 recess. Even in its gayest days it ever became so immediately 

 hunting was stopped. That it has lost much of its greatness 

 is evidenced by its society being less than half its old propor- 

 tions. Consequently emptiness is much more readily and 

 •easily arrived at now than then. Why its attraction should 

 fail to be as powerful now, is not easy to say. Melton is 

 equally a concentric point for the best country of three notable 

 packs of hounds as it was then, and as it is also now for the 

 junction of the three great railways of the north. But if Ave 

 look round we shall find that the other towns also entirely fail 



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