191 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



praise of old Timbersmasher has just established — by calling 

 attention to the too obvious deformity of Sunbeam's battered 

 legs. " Capital bone, hasn't she ? How much does she measure 

 below the knee ? " Unhappy boy. " Have another cigar. I 

 don't think we'll look at any more horses ! " The well-crusted 

 cynic, again, is even more, because he is intentionally, brutal. 

 He ignores at once your half-uttered panegyrics — nipping in the 

 very bud by commenting, in tones of a man making new and 

 important discoveries yet too generous to retain all the advan- 

 tages thereof for his own use, on each and every defect in your 

 shapely collection that has been an eyesore to you for months 

 or even years ! " Did I build the horse myself? " or " How long 

 do you suppose I've had him in my stable before I found that 

 out ? " is a retort that exasperated Proprietor would give worlds 

 to utter. But he has brought it on himself. All he can do is 

 to hate that man. 



A HUNTSMAN'S DIARY, AND MINE. 



Fox-hunting is a large subject. (If it were not, you might 

 say, a man could scarcely go on drivelling upon it for twenty 

 years on end.) But without the incentive of its exciting 

 phases, the enthusiast's pen had better be amplified into a 

 ploughshare. Hare -hunting is, I am told, quite as scientific a 

 pursuit, and for all I know may be fully as prolific as a subject. 

 No it isn't. Yes, again, it may be. Personally, I see quite as 

 much fun from a back seat in five minutes with foxhounds as 

 the most observant among hare-hunters would be likely to 

 glean in an hour — a space of time that I understand is about 

 the average preparation for currant jelly. But if in those five 

 minutes Larkins takes such a comical tiptopper over timber 

 that anyone but his own mother must laugh at intervals for the 

 rest of the day ; if Jumpkinson cuts down the whole field by 

 landing half-way into a brambly bottom ; or if Martin becomes 

 the receptacle of M.F.H.'s loud and righteous wrath because 



