THE WHIPPER-IN 67 



Before railway advertisements increased and multi- 

 plied our advertising sheets, newspaper editors used 

 generally, in the dulness of autumnal times, to enlarge 

 a leopard or tiger from the caravan of some travelling 

 showman, which, while it afforded a fine crop of 

 paragraphs, as long as it was at liberty, produced a 

 good stout contradiction at the end, and really we 

 don't think we are going much beyond the mark in 

 saying that a bo?ia fide tiger or leopard would not be 

 much more dangerous than some of these enlarged 

 canine bedlams, called scratch packs. 



Beckford relates how a kennelled pack once ate up 

 their Huntsman — nothing but the unfortunate man's 

 buttons being found to account for him — and we have 

 seen animals scouring the country that seemed equal 

 to anything — anything, from a "helephant down to a 

 hearwig," as the dancing-master Huntsman, to the 

 short-lived Fulham harriers, said of his. A man that 

 has never tried his hand with foxhounds has not the 

 slightest conception of the undertaking. He sees 

 forty or fifty couple of great strapping, high-con- 

 ditioned animals, all as docile and obedient as lap- 

 dogs — apparently rather inert than otherwise — and he 

 very likely fancies that listlessness is their character- 

 istic, that they are a sort of canine calves, and that 

 anybody can manage them. Little as hounds are 

 attended to in the field, it must have struck even the 

 most casual observer what totally different animals 

 they are in kennel and out. In kennel they are easy, 

 indolent, devil-may-care sort of creatures, checked by 

 a word, almost a look, but when their mettle is roused 

 by the scent, what dash, what energy, what life, what 

 determination is called forth. The Huntsman's horn 

 and the Whipper-in's rate are equally disregarded, and 

 "getting at them" is the only chance of stopping 

 them. How small a man feels in a kennel with some 

 fifty or sixty couple, looking and smelling at him, as 

 much as to say, " Pray, what business have you here ? ' 



