GRASS COUNTRIES. 

 Season 1890—91. 



LATE AUTUMN. 



A day's hunting should be occupation sufficient for man or 

 woman — for that day at least. But is it, when it begins soon 

 after daylight and ends before luncheon — any more than dancing 

 at a ball for four hours, with only a single check, is sufficient 

 for the whole twenty-four ? This is no argument against early- 

 morning hunting — though frequently an excuse for shunning 

 it, on the part more often of men who would do nothing all day 

 if left to themselves. On the contrary, the same pleasant 

 lassitude that the average Englishman — while as yet not 

 included in the rollcall of Homburg nor arrived at a regime of 

 Vichy and Apollinaris — naturally welcomes with his after- 

 dinner coffee, is equally a comfortable sequence to cubhunting. 

 It forms, indeed, a charming excuse for a lazy afternoon. 

 Laziness when not a crime is a luxury. And the man is a poor 

 thing who, feeling he cannot afford it, has not the energy to 

 shake himself clear. No, in the matter of cubhunting dis- 

 inclination is more often a matter of fashion. Were the pastime 

 fashionable, fewer drawbacks would present themselves — and 

 we should all go a-hunting in the early morn. 



Thank goodness, it is not so ; and so those who care for the 

 sport on its own account, see a great deal of fun without getting 

 in each other's way. But the ground is as yet too sunbound to 

 admit of complete enjoyment — though, with the glass now 

 galloping downhill and the forecasts prophesying unutterable 

 things, this Monday may prove to have been the last- summer 



