1844] MR. HENRY BODEN. U7 



active as men who are many years his juniors. He stands 

 somewhere about six feet six in his stockings, and his con- 

 temporaries at Oxford tell a story of how he once went 

 to see a giant, and the latter sent him a private message, 

 askino- him to leave the room, as there could not be two 

 siants there at once ! As a matter of fact, Mr. Okeover 

 was requested to step on to the platform to illustrate the 

 height of the giant by walking under the latter's extended 

 arm without having to stoop. 



This year was memorable for the famous dead heat for 

 the Derby between Colonel Peel's Orlando and the Hon. 

 E. Petre's The Colonel, and also for the dehut in the hunt- 

 ing field of a little boy of eight years of age, who was 

 destined to make his mark in after years. This was none 

 other than Mr. Henry Boden, who has by this time fairly 

 earned the reputation of being, perhaps, the best all-round 

 man of his age in England. On his sixty-second birthday 

 he walked from Derby to Foston (eleven miles in two hours 

 and forty minutes) to dine and sleep with Mr. Fort, and 

 offered, after dinner, to walk back again for a wager of 

 fifty pounds, which no one was rash enough to lay. 

 Whether he owes his remarkable staying powers to his 

 abstention from alcohol in any form, and almost entirely 

 from tobacco, can be left to the discussion of the curious in 

 such matters. He thinks nothing, now in his sixty-sixth 

 year, of riding from Derby to Sudbury — and a weary road it 

 is — fifteen miles, hunting all day, and riding home, perhaps, 

 seventeen miles at night. As to his nerve, it is as good 

 now as it was twenty-five years ago. He took to polo in 

 his sixty-fourth year, having never hit a ball with a polo 

 stick in his life before, and was very soon good enough 

 to play at Hurlingham, Eanelagh, and Rugby, while he 

 is a constant player at Elvaston. Since he first came out 

 hunting, in 1844, with the Donington Hounds, in the 

 mastership of Mr. Story, of Lockington, and Sir Seymour 

 Blane, Bart., of the Pastures, he has never missed a season, 

 and hopes to begin his fifty-eighth this winter.* 



* He broke hia collar-bone out cub-hunting, with the Meynell, just before the 

 opening meet, and waa therefore unable tobe preaent on that occasion. 



