34 FOX-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



your chickens, perhaps you will allow my hunts- 

 man to cast my hounds/' I did not hear the 

 last of it for many a day. Even now, forty years 

 after date, I doubt if that episode is quite for- 

 gotten when I meet my good old friends the 

 Right Honourable Henry Chaplin and Sir E. 

 Chandos Leigh. This was my first and last effort 

 at hunting the Burton hounds — distinctly it was 

 not a success ! The story of this adventure was 

 fully appreciated by another intimate friend, 

 George Whyte-Melville, who delighted in any 

 humours of the chase, though he invariably 

 accepted his own disasters with perfect equa- 

 nimity. When living in the Pytchley country 

 he was one day accidentally cannoned against, 

 at a fence, by a near neighbour who had lost 

 control of his steed, and was knocked over, horse 

 and all. On picking himself up, and in reply 

 to inquiries, Whyte-Melville merely remarked, 

 "Now I know what St. Paul meant when he 

 wrote, ^ Perils by mine own countrymen.* " 



