Two Days With the Q^uorn {Second Day) 103 



on the hotel steps, might think 1 was unable to manage 

 Richard or, worse yet, that I was trying to show off. On the 

 other hand, I did not like to take Richard sharply by the head 

 and saw him down, and possibly get into a fight with him 

 that might put him in bad humour for the day. I have seen 

 many a spirited mount made sulky and unhappy, spoiling 

 the day's sport for liimself and his rider, because the latter was 

 too harsh and rank with him at the start. Hunting is a part- 

 nership game in which the rider should do his utmost to be 

 perfectly agreeable to his horse. 



Regardless, therefore, of what anyone might say or think, 

 Richard had his fling and we settled down in a few minutes 

 with a perfect understanding and on the best of terms with each 

 other. 



At least two hundred mounts rode out that day to pay their 

 respects to one little fox. Dukes and farmers, lords and traders, 

 squires and tenants, the lady from the hall and the country girl 

 from the cottage, all assembled, united in one common bond 

 stronger than freemasonry and as lasting as the church. The 

 Master, the Earl of Lonsdale, bowing graciously alike to the 

 farmer and the peer, rides up with twenty odd couples of most 

 beautiful hounds. ( This pack, or at least this hunt, is now over 

 two hundred years old.) Of course, the hunt servants, like his 

 Lordship, are faultlessly dressed. Gentlemen, who have driven 

 to the meet, now remove their overcoats and the white aprons 

 they have worn over their whitened riding breeches to preserve 

 them spotless to the hour of mounting, while the whole field is 

 moving about hke a great kaleidoscopic picture. The sporting 

 parson in his priestly garb goes wandering about among his 

 flock like the one black sheep of the fold. I had heard a good 

 deal about the sporting parsons in England, but this was the 

 first time I had seen one hunting. It did look rather strange, 

 but he seemed to be as much loved and as highly respected by all 

 classes as the great Earl of Rosebery, at that time Prime Min- 



