ECONOMICAL SPOKT. 133 



expensive one. If he has a moor he must be well off, 

 and the grouse season is very short, even were the 

 attendant expenses small, which they are not. A par- 

 tridge manor is not had for nothing, nor does a keeper do 

 his work gratis. With an average partridge manor you 

 have pretty good fun through September; and during 

 the other months you get a few days driving or hawking ; 

 but neither of these games, especially the latter, is to be 

 indulged in too often. In the present advanced state of 

 farming none but a maniac would expect to walk birds 

 up in a legitimate manner after the 1st of October, if they 

 have been shot at at all regularly in September ; so the 

 number of days spent in the pursuit of your sport will be 

 such as to leave you a fair amount of leisure. If you go 

 in for pheasants, you will spend a fair (or unfair) amount 

 of money for a very few days' diversion. To be shot 

 twice is about as much as most coverts will stand in 

 a season, and in no case is pheasant shooting a poor man's 

 sport, unless he be asked to shoot with a rich friend ; and, 

 indeed, I am not considering invitations which are at the 

 option of one's friends, but the amount of sport which a 

 man, even one who has no friends, can calculate on having 

 for himself, at his own time and convenience. Of course, 

 to speak of deer stalking on the same page as economy 

 would stamp the individual thus exposing himself as a 

 candidate for Hanwell. 



Next turn we to hunting. The expenses incidental to 

 the chase can be calculated to a tolerable nicety ; indeed, 

 the only thing that would throw a man very far out in 

 this would be the death or permanent injury of a horse. 

 Hunting may of course be done in as expensive a way as 

 anything else. To take a dozen horses to Market Har- 

 borough or Melton is a decidedly extravagant business ; so, 



