Fox Hunting in America 23 



While the club has often been ridiculed by New York city 

 papers, nowhere in America, or in the world, let us hope, can 

 any other hunt club be found riding to such stiff timber fences, 

 and nowhere in America at least that the writer has ever 

 ridden, except in the chase of the coyote and Jack Rabbits with 

 greyhounds on the open plains, is the pace as fast as it is with 

 the Meadowbrook draghounds. 



It is simply a cross country steeplechase with a racing pack 

 of hounds instead of a flagged course to lead the way. The 

 writer will never forget his first flight over those post and rail 

 fences. He was mounted on Mr. C. A. Steven's "Doctor,'* 

 a son of Macbeth, whom the writer had reared and schooled in 

 the Genesee Valley. A most powerful jumper. 



The meet was at the beautiful club house adjoining the 

 kennels at Hempstead. There were at the hunt more pink 

 hunting coats and high silk hats in evidence than could be 

 collected among all other hunt clubs in America. It made a 

 very pretty sight which would have been a credit to any of the 

 fashionable packs of the famous grass countries of England, 

 appointments perfect and the best lot of hunters to be found in 

 a single hunt in the United States. At the meet "Doctor" 

 moped about, and in company with horses, mostly clean thor- 

 oughbreds, he looked and felt more like a lumbering farm horse 

 than a hunter. In this respect he was the most deceptive horse 

 the rider ever owned. To see liim going to a meet you would 

 think he was being ridden home from a day's ploughing. To 

 see him going at his fences when hounds were ahead of him, 

 you would say that he was the most resolute, sjDirited charger 

 anywhere to be found, bold, determined, straight going, and 

 the cleanest timber jumper a man ever rode. "Doctor" never 

 hesitated or wavered. His inspiration, however, seemed to 

 come from the hounds, for as an exhibition jumper, he was 

 not even ordinary. 



We had hardly left the club house when the hounds broke 



