306 "JOVIAL HUNTSMEN": 



to be a mount between the flags ? Perhaps if the 

 greybeards who hear the whisper, and sigh sadly 

 when they hear it, had begun their hunting career 

 in a country where every third fence or so conceals 

 a strand of bullock wire, they might not have been 

 so recklessly eager to get forward ; perhaps, also, if 

 they had, from the age of seventeen, been in the 

 habit of smoking from fifteen to thirty cigarettes a 

 day, they would not have "sat down to ride so blood- 

 thirstilee " when they reached the brave old days when 

 we were twenty-one. 



But whatever they may say of the lads, no one can 

 withhold admiration when he speaks of the forward 

 riding of our maidens, who now form such a con- 

 siderable element in nearly every hunting-field. In 

 the country from which I write I have several times 

 seen the majority of the field composed of ladies, and 

 nearly all of them meant going from field to field 

 with hounds, while several wanted no lead from any 

 one, and were capable of taking care of themselves. 

 The increase in the number of ladies who hunt is 

 very remarkable. In the seventies there were exactly 

 five ladies who followed hounds in these parts, and 

 really rode up to them, and this little band included 

 three really celebrated horsewomen ; in 1906 we have 

 something like fifty side-saddles in the field, inclusive 

 of the little girls on their ponies, who take to hunting 

 as ducklings to the water — that is to say, they take 

 to the riding part of the performance, but whether 

 the working of the hounds and the actual hunting 

 of the fox appeals to them is another matter. That 

 this should be the case is a consummation devoutly 



