Fox Hunting in America 31 



the club house, having a look at all the coverts on the way. 

 Our huntsman, as you remember, cast his hounds into the 

 "Barrens" and "the field" located on the lower edge. I beheve 

 it was at this moment that you left us. What a pity! If you 

 had waited another few minutes you never could have been 

 torn away by anything short of instant death. Presently the 

 hounds began making the most beautiful music a hunting man 

 ever heard, when right out before us, not a hundred yards from 

 "the field," came two foxes. Of course we were wild and most 

 anxious for the hounds to get onto their game. The snow 

 frozen just hard enough to carry the fox and hounds, and we 

 were afraid the scent would grow cold. Our huntsman and 

 hounds did not appear for quite awhile and some of the "thresh- 

 ing devils" began to get worked up. But our good huntsman 

 knew his business like a book, the hounds continuing to make 

 the woods ring — when all at once out comes "Mr. Fox" number 

 three, and not two minutes after him our huntsman and the 

 hounds all bunched in the prettiest shape I ever saw. This fox 

 took a direction north of the other two so there was no con- 

 flicting scent. The snow just kept the hounds from going too 

 fast and no one knew it better than "Bre'r Fox." He ran us 

 back and forth between the Barrens, Westtown school, and 

 Poplar Hill until four o'clock, when he holed. We viewed him 

 at least fifty times, in fact, there was hardly a time during the 

 hunt that he was more than a field or two ahead of the hounds 

 and many times much closer. We covered during the run, I 

 suppose, fifty miles, but the going was so fine and the pace so 

 steady that it did not kill our horses like an hour's run at a 

 steeplechase clip with a few checks thrown in. It was not a 

 day for "thresliing devils," but the day for the man who enjoys 

 hunting for the sake of the hunt, to see the individual hounds 

 work, first this one and then that one in the lead, etc. 



Pardon the length of this, but it is a day I shall never for- 

 get. I will never get tired of thinking and talking about it, 



