THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



' It would have been impossible o^ot to have done so,' replied 

 his Lordship. ' In the first place, it was one of the finest 

 mornings I ever saw in ni}^ life, and I delight in a fine spring 

 morning above all things. I always think that the same animal 

 pleasure which makes the bird sing, rises sensibly in the heart 

 of man.' 



'Give me a November morning,' interrupted Somerby, 'and 

 music of another sort than the chirping of birds and bleating 

 of lambs. This is all very well for your pastoral poets to sing- 

 about ; but, as Forrest says, there is no such melody to the ear 

 of a sportsman, with a good stud of hunters in his stable, as the 

 clinking of women's pattens in the Melton streets on a dark 

 night in December.' 



' Every man to his taste,' resumed Lord Edmonston ; ' all 

 these things are very \vell in their way, if not carried too far. 

 I see no objection, for example, to a gentleman driving his 

 own coach, provided he do not lose caste by transforming 

 himself into a coachman. But, I repeat, the love of the 

 pursuit does not admit of his going to extrevies. We debase 

 ourselves by imitating servants in the first place ; and, in the 

 next, by exalting them to something like an equality with our- 

 selves, we make them conceited, and, consequently, destroy 

 subordination. And the example is often injurious to very 

 young men. I knew one, very w^ell connected, and with good 

 prospects before him, who began by affecting the character of 

 a coachman, and ended by adopting it, to the great mortifica- 

 tion of his family.' 



' You are hitting me under the bars,' said Jack Webber, with 

 one of his good-humoured smiles. 



'Present company are always excepted,' replied the peer; 

 ' besides, you have resumed your place in society, wdiicli, indeed, 

 you can scarcely be said to have lost ; for I know^ that, wdien you 

 took it into your head to turn coachman, you never forgot that 

 you w^ere a gentleman. Indeed, I have been told that you w^ere 

 the cause of working a reformation amongst jour brethren of 

 the whip on the Brighton road.' 



' As for myself,' resumed Jack Webber, ' I was never happier 

 than during the three years I was a coachman, and I wish 

 the next three years of vny life may be as well and profit- 

 ably employed. The devil, they say, ahvays employs an idle 

 man, but I was too busy for him, and he left me alone. 



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