302 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN ": 



ing evenings, of high jinks at the Old Club at Melton 

 and elsewhere ; but these be things of the past. The 

 increasing presence of ladies in the hunting-field has 

 softened the manners and improved the taste of the 

 day; the fair partakers in the sport, who began to 

 hold their own over the country, by no means objected 

 to talk over the day's amusement in the evening with 

 their cavaliers, who forsook the festive board for their 

 company, and had neither need or wish then to celebrate 

 in " collar glasses " the fox killed above ground ; though 

 I trust that "Fox-hunting" may long be drunk in 

 winter-time ere we join the ladies. 



It must not be forgotten, however, that these Hunt 

 meetings were convened not only for purposes of 

 revelry ; it was the custom to transact at them much 

 business, and to ventilate ideas concerning the sport 

 and its improvement ; suggestions were made and 

 carried ; and perhaps men spoke their minds more 

 freely than they do in the garish light of day round 

 a formal table covered with pens, ink, and paper — and 

 no collar-glasses. 



I have an old Hunt card in a scrap-book, placed there 

 in youthful days, with a deep line under one of the 

 fixtures to remind me of a famous run. The card is 

 old-fashioned, a printed form, the fixtures filled in 

 with the pen ; the year is 1866, the month January, 

 and opposite Thursday, 25th, is written " Killerig X 

 Roads ; members dine together in Carlow." 



Well, the Hunt dinner is a thing of the past ; the 

 members no more " dine together," and, indeed, going 

 out to dinners in the country in winter-time has 

 long been voted a nuisance intolerable. " Where the 



