172 THE HUNTING FIELD 



How long will it be, we should like to know, 

 before he would muster resolution to take a cool 

 survey of the spot, and look with indifference on the 

 varied footings of the horses and the cattle ? yet this 

 man is a foxhunter himself, to whom farming is a 

 secondary object ; how much stronger, then, must 

 be the feeling of the man who is no foxhunter, and 

 whose sole dependence is on the produce of that 

 trampled soil. 



Take a field of turnips — what havoc and 

 destruction a field of horsemen make in smashing 

 through its contents ! Not only what the horses 

 absolutely knock out of the ground and destroy, but 

 every turnip they hit is more or less injured, 

 especially if there comes a frost. We must say, and 

 greatly to their credit we say it, that it really is 

 astonishing the damage and inconvenience farmers 

 put up with every year, and the extraordinary good 

 grace with which they do it. It is not the grumpy, 

 passive acquiescence, that looks — " I'd break your 

 head if I durst " — but the sheer downright permission 

 to do what the exigencies of the sport require. All 

 farmers stipulate for is against " wilful damage," and 

 most justly are they entitled to what they ask. 

 Nothing can be more annoying to the true sportsman 

 than to see wanton or unnecessary mischief; crush- 

 ing young quicksets for the sake of a leap, letting 

 cattle escape for want of shutting the gate, or any of 

 the numerous acts of omission or commission that all 

 go to swell the catalogue of damage. 



Some townspeople have not the slightest idea of 

 the damage they do, indeed many of them do not 

 seem to think it is possible to do more harm to one 

 field than to another. There's our friend John 

 Chub, the ironmonger, of Camomile Street, who goes 

 pound, pound, pounding, straight as an arrow, 

 whether hounds are running or drawing, just as he 

 would clatter about among his fenders, fire-irons, and 



