24 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



away and were off like the crack of a gun. The Doctor and 

 his mount were not expecting trouble to begin so soon and 

 were quite beliind, but not for long. The Doctor always 

 jumped clear of his fences in the Genesee Valley, but in the 

 Meadowbrook he left the first half-dozen fences with feet 

 instead of inches to spare. There was no steadying him down 

 to them. He took them all flying in true steej^lechase form. 

 Mr. Stevens promised the writer the ride of his life and he 

 had it, but he felt Mke the girl who said after her first ride 

 down the toboggan slide at the Quebec Ice Carnival, "I would 

 not have missed it for a thousand dollars." "Then ride again?" 

 "No, not for two thousand." Those can laugh who will at the 

 swagger Meadowbrook, but if those who laugh would follow 

 that hunt over stiff Long Island fences, they would find they 

 had no heart or face to laugh, for the chances are their hearts 

 would be in their mouths and their faces in the dumps. 



At any rate, the writer has a most profound respect for the 

 pluck and nerve of the men who ride and the courage and 

 endurance of the horses that carry them across the Meadow- 

 brook country. 



The late Mr. P. F. Collier, editor of "Collier's Weekly," 

 and M. F. H., of the JNIeadowbrook, a sportsman through and 

 through, kept a grand j^ack of English bred staghounds at 

 his country home in New Jersey. ]Mr. Collier rode at about 

 two hundred and fifty pounds, wliich meant his hunters must 

 not only be above ordinary but extraordinary as to weight, 

 bone and muscle, and so they were in this respect. They looked 

 the pick of Ireland and very similar to the noted heavy weight 

 Irish hunters in the hunt stables of Lord Rothschild, or his 

 brother, JNIr I^eopold de Rothschild, at Tring, and Leighton 

 Buzzard, England, where we shall attempt to take the reader 

 in a later chapter. 



Tliis stag hunt is unique, in that the stags to be 

 hunted are the large white-tailed deer, which he had collected 



