138 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



fox ; this kept up the animal anxiety to have him. I then took 

 the fox by the neck and shook him, while I cheered them, in 

 their faces; and when they were all gathered round me, and 

 raging to get hold of him, I tossed the fox among them. This 

 plan I followed from having observed, in my younger days, that 

 Colonel Berkeley always did it ; and from observation of the 

 good effect it had. I defy a man to have set his foot on a 

 fox, with my hounds, in the middle of a field, without their 

 snatching him away, unless he had double-thonged them all 

 into an abstinence through terror; and I am convinced that 

 there are two ways of giving a fox to hounds, the one, slack and 

 improper, and the other, most useful. As I have always said, 

 there is nothing that takes example so much as a hound does 

 from his huntsman, or adopts so completely the method of the 

 man who rules. While I knew Jack Stephens, I never saw any- 

 thing fast in him but his whip and spurs, his haste often occa- 

 sioning delay ; his hounds never grew fond of him, and he had 

 no " dog language." When I saw him with Mr. Osbaldeston 

 (the latter, I think, was often on a pony), it was all hurry, horn 

 and holloa, quick finds in gorses, short bursts, no perseverance ; 

 but on being thwarted or checked, the words were, " Give it up 

 and find another with a better scent." The hounds, therefore, 

 so far as I saw their actions, partook of their huntsman, and 

 they were all for a race ; and then " heads up " was the word 

 for the horn or holloa. In saying this I don't disparage the 

 hounds, for they had in them the old Monson blood; and I 

 have tried in my own kennel the stock of Mr. Osbaldeston's 

 Racer, Chorister, Bluecap, Rocket, and Vanguard, Flourisher, 

 Sailor, Factor, and Conqueror ; and than those from Chorister 

 nothing could be better. Jack^s hounds, when I saw them, were 

 like him ; they were all haste as long as they could see ; flight 

 and spur, whip and horn, and then a "devil of a pause:" they 

 gathered it from the man who taught them. My good friend 

 Mr. William Wyndham's hounds, at Dinton, learned the most 

 calm and gentlemanly conduct from their huntsman and master ; 

 they scorned to take any advantage of a fox, and if the fox 



