126 ikings ot tbe 1f3untiito*1ftel^ 



which was thought by many old sportsmen to have 

 spoiled all enjoyment of the science of hunting. The 

 way Cecil Forester would press upon hounds was trying 

 to a conscientious master of the old school. ' We had 

 a pretty find to-day,' said Hugo Meynell once with 

 bitter sarcasm ; 'first came the fox, then Cecil Forester, 

 and then my hounds.' Yet he was not a mere ' thruster.' 



' Nimrod ' thus bears witness to his excellence as a 

 judge of horseflesh as well as a rider : ' I hesitate not in 

 asserting that in his knowledge of the points, action and 

 capabilities of the English hunter, and in his skill in 

 the art of riding to hounds, he has never been sur- 

 passed in any day.' He had hands almost, if not 

 quite, as wonderful as those of Lord Wilton, and 

 legends of his feats in the hunting-field still linger in 

 Leicestershire. 



On his splendid hunter Bernardo he once cleared 

 a water jump of thirty-one feet. He was, too, an 

 inveterate practical joker, and if he could play a trick 

 upon the field he would never miss the chance. On one 

 occasion, when he had got a good lead in a quick thing, and 

 no one else was close at his heels, he came to a park- 

 paling which even he found it impossible to ' negotiate.' 

 But, casting his keen eyes round, he spied a bridle-gate in 

 which the park-keeper had left the key. He promptly 

 popped through, put the key in his pocket, bade ' good- 

 bye ' to the field, and had the rest of the run all to him- 

 self His motto seemed to have been that everything is 

 fair in sport, as in love or war, but to shut one's brother- 

 sportsmen out from a good thing, in order to have the 

 sole enjoyment of it, seems to me an act of selfishness 

 utterly unworthy of a true sportsman, and, even if done 

 as a joke, is scarcel}' a thing to be proud of But ever}-- 



