150 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



knows as distinctly what he is doing at the moment as he 

 does afterward in looking back upon it. 



Hardly less important than presence of mind are fore- 

 sight and preparation. A business man, or a person of 

 sedentary habits, who found he did not enjoy last season's 

 hunting until the very last few days, was probably unpre- 

 pared for it. One ought really to begin a month or more 

 before the season opens to condition one's self and fit one's 

 self out. The sooner a person learns that this and strength 

 of nerve alone enable him thoroughly to enjoy hunting, the 

 longer and keener will be his pleasure. ** There is no 

 use," many men have said in the States, giving up hunting 

 after a year or two, " in punishing and goading one's self 

 into a pastime in which a man is tortured with fear." The 

 trouble is that they go to the hunting-field with no prepa- 

 ration beyond closing their offices and packing their kits. 

 It is hardly any wonder that they go in fear and trembling, 

 nerved only by friends and lookers-on. 



When you stop to think about it, you would not ask a 

 horse to go through a day's hunting after he had been 

 running about in a farm-yard all winter. It would be 

 absurd. You have him taken up six or eight weeks at 

 least before the opening of the season, and fed and groomed 

 and exercised until he is as hard and fit as possible. In- 

 deed, when you come to mount him you may find him so 

 much above himself that your nerves begin to quake; you 

 have to resort to stimulants. Even then, possibly, you ride 

 him only a few miles and return home completely ex- 

 hausted. A pack of hounds could not run far with no 

 more physical exercise than you have had for the last eight 



