THE ISKKAK IJl' OF TIIK (iRKAT FROST Ol' '95 363 



I trust that he is not the only one who will find these 

 ljaL;('s serve as links with a hapj:)y past : a past which certainly to 

 men like Mr. luhelston. who can use a brush with so much 

 skill, is ne\er likely to be obliterated. The three illustrations 

 of a "Meet at the Green ^lan, klarlow," "A Fast Forty 

 Minutes with the hLssex Hounds" (pa^e 183), and "A Halt for 

 Refreshments" (pa^e 225) are taken from photographs of his 

 paintings, which, subject to his copyright in them, he has kindly 

 placed at my disposal. " 'Twas in the early Eighties " I recall 

 Mr. Ethelston as a keen rider to hounds, when I remember, 

 he had the misfortune to break the back of a favourite mare 

 in a brook with treacherous banks near Maries Wood. 



If ever you want to settle a frost, never mind how long 

 established, get up an Ice Carnival, advertise it well before- 

 hand, evoke out of \'our fertile brain the most varied and 

 fantastic costumes for yourself and fellow- revellers, engage your 

 band (not forgetting the commissariat), and if, when the event- 

 ful evening arrives, you can hear the ring of skates, the hearty 

 laugh and merry jest of the masqueraders, instead of the swish 

 of slushy snow and the muttered lamentations of disappointed 

 Sybarites, you may then, and not before, doubt the efficacy of 

 the frost cure. " let: in grand condition." What a mockery! 

 what a delusion ! But they tell me that this placard, which 

 stared you unblushingly in the face on your way to court 

 rheumatism, influenza, and catarrh upon the rapidly melting- 

 surface, was printed overnight at a time when the ice, from a 

 skater's point of view, was a perfect dream, not a crack nor a 

 wrinkle, but hard and smooth as plate glass. 



Would it had been so when the local representatives of the 

 Essex Hunt met in the lists the doughty champions of bandy 

 fame in Epping, on the last day when hockey was possible in 

 the great frost of 95. Ice that looked like a huge sheet of 

 green ground glass, and hard as marble, yielded to every stroke 

 of the skate more easily than the crust of a wedding cake to a 

 sharp knife ; and it might truly have been compared to toiling 

 over the most sticky ploughs of Essex in comparison with 

 skimming o'er the well-drained and yielding pastures of the 

 Merry Midlands. But a match is a match for a' that, and that 

 which was fair for one was fair for another, so I would not 

 deprive the winning team of a single leaf of their laurel crown, 

 and own that the representatives of the Hunt were squarely and 

 fairly beaten. Mingling with the sigh of regret that our hardy 

 riders could not hold their own came the sweet feeling of satis- 

 facti(Mi that at last, late but not too late for a few brief weeks' 



