258 RECORDS OF THE CHASE 



anything of the country, succeeded in reaching Halford 

 Bridge, where he procured a conveyance to take him 

 to Leamington, leaving his horse to his fate. That 

 however was fortuitous, as a gentleman residing in the 

 country kindly had him taken to his stable and 

 properly attended to till his owner, hearing where he 

 was, sent for him on the following day. The horse had 

 kept up with the hounds throughout the run, and with 

 the exception of having lost three shoes was none the 

 worse for his single-handed exploit. 



In those jolly days when the road was in force and 

 sporting travellers enjoyed their journeys on the box- 

 seat of the coaches, when an appointment to one which 

 passed through a good country was a favour regarded 

 as a little fortune, an anecdote was wont to be related 

 of a man who had been working over some middle 

 ground making an application to a London proprietor 

 for a coach, and having exhausted all his rhetoric in 

 self-commendation concluded by saying he had driven 

 many years and had never had his coach overturned. 

 This, which he thought would be the greatest recom- 

 mendation, afforded the coach proprietor, who wished 

 for a favourable pretext, an opportunity of dismissing 

 the applicant most peremptorily. " Then you won't 

 do for us," said he to the astonished knight of the 

 ribbons; "our coaches are constantly being over- 

 turned, and a man who has never had any practice will 

 never be able to set them on their wheels again." 



If any aspiring young sportsman, having passed his 

 novitiate in a country where the fences are light, 

 priding himself on the paucity of falls he may have ex- 

 perienced, should visit Northamptonshire or any of the 

 other strongly fenced countries, he will find himself 

 precisely in the same dilemma as the disappointed 

 coachman ; for although he may not have to set a coach 

 upon her wheels, he may have to set his horse upon his 

 legs ; in other words, to release him from a ditch, a pro- 

 cess which is often easily accomplished by a means 

 very simple, though not very generally resorted to. 



