THE MEADOW BROOK 



the time at Meadow Brook and the rest with his own hounds. During that 

 period, he hunted the hounds himself over as stiff a country as exists; 

 country which would make the average Englishman "sit up," as will be seen 

 by the following description taken verbatim from a letter by Capt. Pennell- 

 Elmhirst ("Brooksby") — himself a hard man to hounds all his life — writ- 

 ten from Meadow Brook and to be found in his book " The Best of Fun." 



"Our route to the meet ran along the Hempstead Plains, on whose broad 

 bosom (as enticing for a gallop almost as Newmarket Heath) the Meadow 

 Brook Hunt have planted their house, kennels and polo ground. On our 

 right lay farm land of the usual Long Island type, fields of somewhat rugged 

 grass, now brown and scorched by the outgoing heat-season, and stubble 

 and dust-garden remaining from lately gathered harvest. The whole is upon 

 a light loamy soil that never bakes hard and so never rebels obstinately 

 against a horse's footfall. Thus concussion is rmnimized and horses can go 

 on jumping freely year after year. On the other hand, it is never deep or 

 spongy with wet, the descending rain finding its way rapidly to the water- 

 level, some six feet only below the surface. 



"'Surely you don't ride at a flight of rails like that?' I enquired, pointing 

 to a first barricade that met my troubled gaze, to vnt, — a mortised erection 

 of open bars, each of them as thick as a man's thigh and the lot carried con- 

 siderably higher than an ordinary Leicestershire gate. ' Why yes, that's 

 nothing much. The farmers aim at setting their fences at four feet eight to 

 keep their stock in.' I asked no more, but held my peace, while the horrid 

 parallel intruded itself upon my mind of the condemned man in the prison-car 

 catching a first view of the gallows awaiting him. But I gazed and gazed as 

 each successive bone-trap hove in view and you may depend upon it, the 

 longer I looked, the less I liked them, and I wondered who would ride the 

 horses at home in Old England." 



This is the country over which Mr. Griswold rode for nineteen years; and 

 let us again quote from " Brooksby's " letter to show how he did it. 



" With the Mastership, be it added, comes the privilege at all times and 

 under all circumstances of leading the Field in pursuit of hounds. Were 

 this rule enforced in Old England, imagine the feelings of an M. F. H. 



77 



