Courage vs. Funk 151 



months. They could not catch a fox if he were " hoppled." 

 Certainly not, you say; no one would dream of such a 

 thing. Yet it is what many men do for themselves in 

 their own cases. 



The season opens October i. By July i kennel work 

 begins. It is walk, walk, walk, and trot, trot, trot, every 

 day a little farther. Even the foxes have been bustled 

 about for a month to make them give a good long chase. 

 Your mount is fit. Everything and everybody is ready 

 and thoroughly prepared for the chase, excepting you for 

 whom all this preparation has been made, the one of all the 

 group who should be as fit himself as is the horse he is 

 going to ride or the hounds he expects to follow. 



Every season brings to the Genesee Valley and other 

 hunt clubs a score or more of soft, nerve-sick men, who 

 expect to begin riding to hounds the next day, without 

 having lifted a finger toward conditioning themselves. 

 Lamentable sights indeed they are to the natives and the 

 conditioned men who come out to join them. We have 

 seen them at covert-side, when waiting for the whip- 

 per's-in cry of " Tally-o, gone away ! " and the huntsman's 

 rallying cheer " Edawick, Edawick ! " actually speechless and 

 but little short of collapse. Their faces are as pale as 

 ashes ; their supercharged horses only add to their unhap- 

 piness. I remember one case in particular of a gentleman 



from Boston who was a guest, for the week, of a Mr. H , 



and who had that morning arrived, with only time to dress 

 before the hour of the meet came round. His mount 

 had been sent on ahead. The guest was a fine, large, 

 upstanding man, a little on the corpulent side of life. He 



