118 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



Happy they who rode home down the same high wind and 

 not against it — and happy we who can now, within four good 

 walls and outside one fair bottle, listen complacently to as- 

 searching a blast as ever found out the fractures of seasons past. 

 " Newmarket sweaters " are a garment now accepted both in 

 name and practice by the most gentle authority ; and their value 

 to-day was as pronounced and universal as their colouring. 



A COOL, QUICK, PENULTIMATE. 



Cold nights and drying winds seemed to have brought fox- 

 hunting almost to its end, but for southerly wind of the date. 



Far better have been a volunteer marching to Brighton 

 than a foxhunter frozen out of his Easter holiday. The 

 cold that stirs the one to activity condemns the other to 

 grumbling idleness when he can least afford it. Look at the 

 date ! March 24th. Where shall you all be on April 24th ? 

 You will each go your way — though the ways of many 

 may lie in the least healthful, if not fascinating, direction of all, 

 a London season. Recklessly, wastefully, many of us throw 

 away a week in November, a day in December — yet cling to- 

 every hour that is now slipping out of grasp. Foxhunting after 

 all is but a type — a vivid and tolerably guileless type — of man- 

 hood's experience. If manhood counted no worse temptations, 

 no worse thoughts, than are contained in hunting six days a 

 week, there would be but little wilful evil perpetrated — and 

 suffered wrongs would be much less hotly felt than now. Fox- 

 hunting is selfish, they say. Is money-making unselfish ? The 

 devotee in each case spends the bulk of his time, and the main 

 of his energy, apart, in his own fashion and in pursuance of his 

 own object. In which does he do his fellow-labourer least harm ? 

 Which sends him home with a clearer conscience, with plea- 

 santer thought of the day or with more appreciativeness of 

 home — a home that would probably have thanked him but little 

 for his idle presence throughout the day. 



