3/8 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING niARY 



We finished up a long day at 4.30 with the usual blank draw of Forest 

 Hall (I hear that they have not found there this season). This was all the 

 more regrettable, as Miss Gilbey, Mrs. Hine and Miss Blyth, and many 

 more from the further side of Essex, had persevered to the end, undeterred 

 by a twenty-mile ride home. I am afraid they will carry away with 

 them a very poor opinion of this end of their county. Where did you T 

 after all, Mr. Collin, and how many eggs did he stand you ? I hope, at all 

 events, that they were fresh ones, and not like the New York poulterer's, 

 " noo, noo laid" — (N.B. — About three months old) — and who, when 

 asked for something as fresh as a week old, replied that their hens did not 

 lay so recent as that. There was a great run on the refreshment depart- 

 ment at Bowes at 5 p.m. Methinks the gentleman in pink who dispensed 

 the viands with the celerity of a lamplighter has quite mistaken his pro- 

 fession. He only made one mistake — he cut the bread too thin. 



We were all deeply concerned about the welfare of the good Caterham 

 folk : history reported that their Universal Provider in the catering line, 

 on this celebrated Wednesday was decoyed by the Pen-Man into our 

 Roothing country, and early in the run was swallowed up in one of its 

 numerous ditches. 



Grass and Plou(;h. — Was Tuesday,, the 19th inst., when 

 we routed a fox out of Mr. T. J. Mills's stick heap, a bye day ? 

 I can't say, but it would have been a good one had we killed 

 the right fox. Would Nature had provided a safeguard, and 

 that 'twere as easy to distinguish the different sexes in the 

 vulpine tribe as it is for some men to bring down the gaudy 

 cock pheasant, sparing the hens, at the end of the shooting 

 season ! Some of us always swear by the grass ; none of us 

 despise 25 minutes across it at best pace. 



Did the ^rooni* with the letter bao- see the finish ? for we 

 saw him being whirled round and swept along by the irresis- 

 tible tide that surged and boiled up the Rectory lane until it 

 broke on the green shores of Garnish Hall — down to and 

 through the ford, and you couldn't jump the ditch-guarded 

 bank to the left too soon. Mr. E. Ball, Mr. Ford Barclay, 

 and half-a-dozen more fiew it together, and swept over the 

 next two fences in line, as we swung up hill towards Cooper- 

 sale Hall. Wire! my boy! not in ]Mr. Mills' fences. Go at 

 them where you like, and catch the hounds if you can as 

 they fiick back over the small brook, and race up the ploughed 

 field, where Henry John (didn't he even ken it was a vixen ?) 

 sans hat confirmed the line. 



In the road they hovered for a second, and a dozen men 

 had jumped in and out ere ever a hound had whimpered 

 on the turf beyond. On, and out of the lane at a soldier's 

 double, (|uicker if you could manage it, two more fences 

 without slacking rein, and they struck the road beyond 



* Mr. Hotham's. 



