A SMOKING-ROOM PALAVER 331 



pleasanter when folk stayed more at home and wel- 

 comed what strangers came to pitch their hunting 

 camp in the county, and met also at some border 

 fixture the neighbours from the adjoining Hunt. 

 Nowadays, in many countries, if you sally out to look 

 at a neighbouring pack, you find yourself shadowed 

 with a view to an attack on your purse under the 

 new rules, although you are ready and willing to put 

 up any horse or man that wishes to hunt with your 

 own hounds. Such changes, necessary though they 

 may be, do not, to my mind, make hunting pleasanter 

 than in the days of my youth. 



" By the by," I resumed, " you said something about 

 rapidity or pace not very long ago. I'll admit your 

 motor can leave my dogcart standing still; but did you 

 mean to suggest that you think runs are faster now 

 than they were twenty, thirty, forty, or ninety years 

 ago ? because if you did you fall into an error only 

 to be excused by your youth and inexperience." 



" I feel crushed, of course — simply flattened," was 

 the calm reply to my harangue ; " but don't you think 

 they are ? " 



" I've good reason to know they are not" said I. 

 "The chronicles of the chase are pretty accurate and 

 voluminous about sport in the Midlands of England 

 at all events, and there were plenty of records of runs 

 in the beginning of the last century that for pace 

 and distance will surpass anything that is done nowa- 

 days. The late Lord Wilton, who, when he rode on 

 the flat, was allowed to be a wonderful judge of pace, 

 is said to have given his opinion that they used to go 

 faster over the Quorn country when he first went to 



