68 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



If you have but one horse, make up your mind to go 

 short days and pick near meets. If you have two or 

 more horses, I always found that, if I could work it, the most 

 economical thing was to start off on one horse and then, about 

 12 o'clock, let the man leave the stable on another ; and if the 

 meet was handy and he was a sharp fellow and knew the 

 country, he would pick me up about 1.30. I then got off the 

 first horse, even if we had done nothing, and let the man take 

 him home. If the man missed me it did not matter much, as 

 it was only a good exercise for the horse which came on late. 

 A one-horse man must have that one sound and of good con- 

 stitution ; a horse which needs coddling up to get out again 

 within a week is useless to him. If you are a good horseman 

 and a good judge of horses in the rough in farmers' hands, 

 you can buy a good green horse at four years old, make him 

 into a good hunter and, perhaps, sell him for a handsome 

 profit ; but there are many disappointments ; horses go wrong 

 in the wind, get lame and turn out badly, and the profit made 

 on one soon disappears if you have bad luck in succession 

 with a horse or two. Riding horses which you hope to sell to 

 make ends meet is a poor job ; if you do not let him slip 

 along no one will know whether he is any good or not, and if 

 you do you are in an agony of apprehension as to whether 

 he will injure himself. If you have time to spare, you can look 

 after your own horse and probably keep him very fit because 

 you will be interested in him. But if you come in from hunting 

 after a long day you must be a keen sportsman and ardent if 

 you are willing to off with your coat and thoroughly clean 

 the horse and what grooms vulgarly call the " mucky tack." 

 Possibly the cheapest way to hunt with one horse is to keep 

 him with some one whom you could rely on to do him well. 

 If you do not live in the middle of the country you could have 

 him somewhere central and cycle over to where he is stabled. 

 There are certain expenses you cannot avoid ; the subscrip- 

 tion to the hounds, for instance. The time was when sub- 

 scriptions were small and interchangeable, whereby, if you 

 lived on the borders of two hunts, you could hunt with either 

 pack by paying a subscription to one. Hunts have now got 

 so expensive to maintain that this convenient custom has 

 almost gone, and now you must, in most cases, subscribe to 



