Hunting in tJie Golden Days. 1 1 



Our friends do full justice to the meal, for it must be 

 remembered that hunting in the time of which I am 

 writing was different from the sport of to-day. In those 

 days the fox was sometimes started before sunrise, and 

 hunted till sundown, when the jovial huntsmen returned 

 to their dinner, which they made the principal meal of 

 the day. 



Several farmers come in and are welcomed in the 

 same boisterous manner, and after all have satisfied the 

 inner man they mount their hunters again and take 

 the field. 



There is a good field to-day and a large attendance of 

 regular followers. 



What sport, I ask, is there to be equalled to that of 

 fox-hunting, with its healthy exercise, change of scene, 

 sociability, and excitement ? Was it not Lord Palmer- 

 ston who said the finest thing for the inside of a man 

 was the outside of a horse ? Personally, I don't think he 

 was far wrong, I don't want to be sour, but very different 

 is the hunting of the present day of which some young 

 men think so much, from the sport of our grandfathers, 

 in the days when railways were unheard of, and every 

 face was known at a meet. Nowadays many people go 

 out for the sake of pace and jumping fences rather than 

 for love of the good old sport of fox-hunting. How 

 many of our modern sportsmen know the name of one 

 hound from another, or which are most reliable or throw 

 their tongue in cover ? 



Imagine yourself living at the early part of the 

 century, when our forefathers set out at daybreak with 

 their friends and neighbouring squires, having heard of 

 damage done to hen roosts ; they would unkennel their 

 hounds and try to get on the drag of the old fox, and 

 slowly hunt up to where he was sleeping off the effects of 



