A FOXHUNTING JOURNAL 189 



Saturday, i8th December, 1920 



If there 's one place in the world where the head must be an 

 optimist, it's the job of being an M.F.H.; and to feel any- 

 where near the top or able to smile when some one says 

 good-morning to you, after having had a whole string of 

 blank days in a row — well, it takes a foxhunter to do it, 

 that's all. 



It was another of those cold, windy, blue-nosed sort 

 of mornings, when hounds met at Sugartown at eleven 

 o'clock, and about seventy of the faithful braved the ele- 

 ments, but inwardly feeling it was n't much use trying to 

 find a fox, it was so windy and cold; and I must confess 

 that after three hours of it, had it not been for a very 

 fascinating, dark-eyed beauty, mounted on a once cele- 

 brated race-horse, that my own feeble enthusiasm might 

 have fizzed out before the real business of the day began. 

 But being hungry, as was the before-mentioned fascinating, 

 dark-eyed one, and both of us having well-filled sandwich 

 cases, we decided to eat our lunch together on the sunny 

 side of a friendly barn; and, keeping hounds more or less in 

 sight, had just finished our sandwiches, and somewhat 

 sheepishly rejoined the field, when hounds went away at 

 top-speed from the wood back of Miss Hook's, and, cross- 

 ing the Goshen Road, turned sharply left-handed just be- 

 fore reaching Button's Mill, raced over the hill into Del- 

 chester, where they checked a moment and gave some of us 

 a chance to catch up; then a wide cast by Will Leverton on 

 top of the Delchester Hill put them right again, and, cross- 

 ing the West Chester Pike, hounds swam Ridley Creek and 

 checked a moment by the covered bridge, but, picking it up 

 in the road, fairly flew on to Pickering's Thicket, on through 

 it to Hunting Hill and down-country to the meadow below 

 the old Rawle Farm, when Reynard evidently did n't like 



