SHOOTING COATS. 173 



district — finding scent but indifferent, even though the well- 

 soaked turf was all their field could want for foothold or for 

 fall. 



I am fain to allow that the hunting field of October, even 

 with a pack of fame and fashion, does not behave very well to 

 itself as far as personal adornment goes — the ladies of course 

 excepted, for do they ever insult themselves by self-neglect I 

 and has it not been written that " if she be but young and fair, 

 she hath the grace to know it ? " In these days a man has 

 probably in his wardrobe more smoking coats than shooting 

 coats. (By the way, what a radiant field we should have if, on 

 an occasional day, say, once a week on the Leamington side, the 

 order for covertside parade were " smoking coats ! ") A man 

 of the humbler sort — especially unless, as sometimes happens, 

 his tastes in life carry him no further afield than a hot corner 

 and a warm drawing-room — allows himself one decent suit of 

 tweed apparel at a time, in the which he travels, and in which 

 he associates with his country neighbour. For the wife of his 

 bosom and the toilers of the stableyard he reserves the old 

 clo' — already rather " better " than half worn out. In these, 

 too, he carries out his shooting, his colt-schooling, and his 

 general round of work or idleness. The hunting-day then 

 arrives, with a gloomy ceiling significant of drenching showers ; 

 and, besides, he is going into a plough country, with a five-year- 

 old and a very fair certainty of a dirty fall. To-morrow the 

 Johnsons are coming to lunch. Mr. J. is always neat and smart 

 as a novus homo should be, and pretty Mrs. J. is not at all the 

 sort of woman before whom to appear in a threadbare coat. 

 No, the new garment must stop at home ; the shabby jacket go 

 a-hunting ; and, somehow or other, the same chain of circum- 

 stance and reasoning seems to have had a hand in clothing nine 

 out of ten of his somewhat shabby comrades of the day. 



Look to your colours, ye ladies of Leicestershire ! To the 

 county of Northampton belong the first honours of justice to 

 the national cloth — the scarlet of heroism in war and chase. 

 What the dames have done for politics and for patriotism, the 



