GRASS COUNTRIES. 



Season 1886—87. 



SHOOTING GOATS. 



_, The final musters of the cub-hunting months are often as 

 representative — if scarcely as exaggerated — as those of mid- 

 winter. And the multitude makes the multitude ride. I 

 question if it is ever much harder upon hounds even when 

 arrayed in all the panoply of adventure and pride. An item in 

 a shooting jacket is apt to consider himself incog., at least to 

 a degree that allows a chance of his being set down as " only 

 somebody's man schooling a young one " — instead of being 

 wrathfully particularised as that " thrusting chap who killed 

 old Dorothy, and whose subscription wouldn't pay for the rails 

 he breaks in a week." I have no individual instance before 

 me — nor will I have in the future when seeming to adopt the 

 villany of fault-finding — unless perchance I may have caught 

 myself tripping or fooling, and can picture it under some alias 

 for the entertainment of our little world. But, i' faith, good 

 company does dispel funk, as it scatters many another doleful 

 malady of mind or nerve. We who hunt looking on — one eye 

 on the hounds, another on the Master, and as many more as 

 we've got on our comrades, that haply they may help us along 

 or discover some chance outlet that has escaped our bewildered 

 vision — we have none of the righteous sense of duty that, 

 assisted by a very proper conveyance, urges a man instinctively 

 whither the pack calls, regardless of all else than of the last 

 spot where the leading couple spoke, or of the clod in a gate- 

 way who has " hoorooshed " the fox back in his very track. 



