THE BLANK DAY 281 



kingdom, I trust, know better than to regale them- 

 selves on their way home by a " school" across 

 country, common though the practice used to be not 

 so very many years ago — a practice which is said 

 to have originated in the Midlands in the days of 

 Dick Christian, when one of the feather-headed 

 " thrusters " exclaimed, " What fun we should have if 



it wasn't for these d d hounds ! " Nowadays, though 



a solitary horseman homeward bound, may jump a 

 fence or two to cut off a long distance round by the 

 road, we hear too much about damage to fences 

 and the "cutting up" of land when hounds are run- 

 ning to make it expedient for a bevy of sportsmen 

 to " frolic home " after a bad day, after the fashion 

 of the olden time. Yet I think the miseries of the 

 blank day are so depressing that something to raise 

 our spirits and put us in heart again is sorely needed; 

 and if on such an occasion we have a farmer out 

 with us who desires to show us the way over his own 

 land, I, for one would not decline to follow his lead. 

 Happily the blank day is a misery that has seldom 

 fallen to my lot, but the rare experiences of the 

 calamity are very deeply impressed upon my memory. 

 We, in Ireland, are experiencing a long period of 

 drought, and at such times, even in well-foxed 

 countries, foxes are very hard to find. The last blank 

 day, mentioned above, was the only one I have seen 

 for several years, and I trust that a still longer time 

 may elapse before I see another. It was a weariful 

 experience, but for many hours in the day we were 

 buoyed up with hope, while in the morning we looked 

 upon the finding of foxes as such a certainty that the 



