HINTS ON GROUSE DRIVING. 135 



ham. However, all this is exceptional, and, as a 

 rule, one should be thankful if offered a pony to 

 ride to the moors upon " Shanks' s mare" being the 

 more common, and, upon the whole, perhaps safest 

 method of progression. There is generally a hill 

 to start with, and, although the masters are as a 

 rule in pretty good training, and get on right enough, 

 one cannot occasionally help pitying the smart 

 London valet, staggering along under the un- 

 accustomed load of a couple of Purdeys and a couple 

 of hundred cartridges, and probably a waterproof, 

 driving seat, or some little trifle of that sort, thrown 

 in gratis. 



But to your butts, O Israel or rather O Gentile ; 

 for, as far as my experience goes, the Semitic 

 race are more frequently encountered in Piccadilly 

 or Buckinghamshire than discovered prematurely 

 " turfed " behind a Yorkshire scatter-gun pit ; and 

 your butt is, as a rule, easily enough found, a large 

 white number, almost as large as some of the street- 

 door numbers in Paris, generally staring you in the 

 face. How anxiously, having just puffed and blown 

 up a good steep hill, do you inquire of some one in 

 the know whether No. 7 or i is at the right or left 

 of the line ? Arrived at last, you sit down either on 

 your driving stick, or the seat with which a careful 

 host is pretty sure to have provided you ; mop your 

 brow, make a resolution that you will not smoke 

 before luncheon (which firm resolve lasts for about a 



