174 FOX -HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



brighter sex is now doing for fox-hunting in this old-fashioned 

 shire. Pretty heads have been laid together, treaties have been 

 concluded, Signor Snip has been put on his utmost mettle, and 

 by next week the fashion will be found set, endorsed, and 

 adopted— the same that found such favour last season in sport- 

 ing Meath. Surely, if men consider they uphold the honour 

 and the popularity of Fox-hunting (" God bless it ! ") by clothing 

 their ungainly bodies in pink attire, how much firmer hold will 

 be attained upon the affections of the populace, how much 

 deeper emphasis will be laid on the traditional value of the 

 sport, by the wearing of the symbol by those who are fair to 

 look upon ? The principle is right. The practice cannot but 

 be bright and becoming. And, with the ice of novelty once 

 broken, the league of scarlet will soon have a widely-gathered 

 muster-roll. 



If naught else comes of October hunting (and the merits of 

 the month hinge almost entirely upon the use made of it — 

 which, again, depends very much upon the views of each 

 M.F.H. as to education of hounds and foxes), it seldom fails to 

 give to us onlookers a pretty fair inkling of what to expect in 

 the near future from each new inmate of our stable. It may 

 even be utilised in a great degree to correct many shortcomings 

 of disposition and acquirement ; and, whoever has missed such 

 opportunity (or failed to send another to seize it for him) may, 

 likely enough, soon be seen bewailing his negligence, in shat- 

 tered hat or battered repute. What matters it in October, if a 

 young one rolls clumsily through a blind gap, breaks the weakest 

 rail we can find him, or challenges to a twenty minutes' tussle 

 before he will own that he can jump a fence of any description ? 

 'Tis all in the day's work — in the day's pleasure. But in the 

 morrow of November — when everyone will be in a hurry, and 

 the black devil of disappointment shall take the hindermost — 

 such exercise is the province only of the unprepared, or the 

 impecunious (and from a varied experience I can testify pretty 

 accurately to the miseries of either state). Few men, bar such 

 of the gilded youth as have held themselves superior to the 



