STIMULATING EXPERIENCES. 573 



tanning will waft away a head that sodawater could nut touch 

 nor pick-me-up exorcise — though the remedy, being rather of 

 the kill-or-cure description, can scarcely be recommended as 

 appropriate to very delicate or over-sensitive organisations. 

 People will tell you that in moments like these the person 

 most interested finds his or her mind making a hurried resume 

 of all past life. I doubt not that, if anybody had been seated 

 beside me on Saturday morning, he or she would have found 

 ample opportunity for such looking-back. For my part, I was 

 far too much engrossed in looking forward, for a soft spot into 

 which to upset the trap, to think of aught else, — unless it was 

 with a vague sense of pleasure to note the masterly way in 

 which the young runaway laid himself down to his gallop, and 

 to clear the rugs from round my legs. At the end of two miles 

 — as attractive to the country side as John Gilpin's notable 

 career — I found the soft spot in the shape of a high thorn 

 fence, and plunged the whole outfit into it with marked 

 success. Damages — one overcoat torn down the back, all 

 buttons stripped off knees of breeches, one wheel-spoke 

 broken, and one young horse spoiled for harness. Good get- 

 out — and, like all good get-outs, refreshing to the spirit and 

 encouraging to the nerve. 



Equally stimulating was the next item of the day, quite as 

 fast and furious, and, for choice, rather more palatable. The 

 same kind kismet that had landed me into a soft thorn bed 

 brought me, on a farmer-friend's pony, in touch with hounds 

 at the moment they were being galloped to a holloa in the 

 Boddington Vale (Bicester), and allowed me to chime in just 

 as Lord Chesham, Lord Londonderry and several near 

 associates were popping out of the long spinney that bisects 

 the plain. Close at their fox, hounds kept their field at 

 fullest stretch alongside the railway — held them by 500 yards, 

 in fact, over the deep-furrowed grass, though gates were 

 frequent and fences facile. It was as a Belvoir scurry of old 

 time — a steeplechase upon the track of hounds, and hounds 

 having all the best of it. In a dozen minutes they turned 



