156 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



lambs, but would fain be thought so, joining the one party or 

 the other, as fancy or figure dictated. The wicked ones in 

 sheepskin, too, mixed freely in either throng, shared their 

 pursuits, or hovered outside on the watch for a straggler, stray- 

 ing maybe not unwillingly nor unconsciously. Badminton is, 

 doubtless, an exhilarating if not an ennobling game, but 

 me thinks, if I had a mind to be young again, I would rather 

 seek my amusement with yon grey-clad skater than with his 

 prototype wielding a Badminton bat. The former is swinging 

 round the glassy arena hand-in-hand with a supple nymph, the 

 sparkle in whose eye and the rose on whose cheek can surely 

 not all be due to the exercise ; the latter has to stand rooted 

 silently to his section of the court, posed elegantly with legs 

 wide apart, mouth and eyes wide open, every nerve intent on 

 returning a ball of Berlin wool over a net — no whispered word, 

 no gentle pressure of hand for him. He is but an unit of the 

 dozen thus solemnly attitudinising ; his loved one is placed, 

 may be, yards behind him, and the only winged words that 

 reach him are her chidings as he fails in his stroke ; and yet 

 Young England, after a brief transportation, does play Bad- 

 minton — more, I am inclined to think, as a means than an 

 amusement. That a temporary degeneracy may ofttimes be 

 begotten of circumstance, we have the case of Hercules and 

 Omphale of old to prove; while for more modern instance have 

 we never seen a staunch warrior holding a skein of worsted for 

 fair hands to wind, nor deemed his occupation one whit less 

 worthy of his manhood than is Badminton ? 



But if the above gay throng suffered no depression from the 

 absence of heavy fathers and doting husbands, the Ootacamund 

 Hunt Fund did; for the fair beings by no means represented 

 in full degree the family purse, while as for their esquires, 'twas 

 pitiable, 'twas eminently sad, to see how complacently they 

 doffed the lion skin, laid down the club (I refer not by any 

 means to Ooty's corner-stone of tittle tattle — the men's brush- 

 and-comb association of the Neilgherries), and took up the 

 lyre. In other words, how they gave up hunting and took to 



