44 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



safety of a powder-magazine, from a cigar when out shooting. 

 He was sitting under a bank after lunch, with a lighted cigar in 

 his mouth with a red-hot ash to it half an inch long; pulling 

 out his powder-flask, and unscrewing the top, he looked in to 

 see how much powder he had got, totally forgetting that when 

 he put the magazine up to his eye, his additional beak, with the 

 light at the end of it, would be sure to go in and set fire to it. 

 Up it went, with an explosion most terrific, tumbling the keepers 

 over in fright, sending the retriever after something the dog 

 supposed must have been killed in the other world, and mingling 

 partridges, beer, and bread and cheese in a confused heap : his 

 eyebrow and whisker the only things singed. 



A cigar, on some men, acts as a quieter of the nerves, and 

 gives them what with drink would be called " Dutch courage." 

 When my hounds have first spoken to a fox in cover, rap went 

 the pommels of saddles, flash, flash, flash the lights ; " Give me 

 a light, old fellow," said one, " Your flask," said another, each 

 feeling that they needed artificial rousing. For myself, I never 

 would resort to this ; but when I found the nerves I used to have 

 over a country failing, I was content with those that still stood 

 by me, and with these I saw, and on good horses could still see, 

 a deal of fun. Old Billy Butler, of Dorset renown, the last, I 

 believe, of the old style of port-drinking, hunting and sporting 

 parsons, used to say, with much truth, that in a straightforward 

 burst of twenty-five minutes, while the wind and powers of a 

 horse lasted, the riders of twenty years of age would beat the 

 men of thirty, and that the men of thirty would beat those of 

 forty, and so on. As a general assumption, this is perfectly 

 correct; for in a burst of that description, each man with a 

 start, the choice of ground and quick eye to the turn of hounds 

 do not tell, but the spur and the nerve do all. The late Mr. 

 Charles Tollemache, who belonged to my stag-hunt, so long as 

 I kept it up, never had any nerves for a start among a crowd in 

 my remembrance ; but on his splendid brown horse Radical, the 

 fastest horse I ever saw through dirt, if he got an advantage, he 

 would slip away like wild -fire, and was very difficult to catch. 



