242 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



the power cannot be attributed to love, for often an entire 

 stranger can make an animal do things which the owner, 

 who loves the creature dearly and is in turn dearly loved, 

 fails to accomplish. One man will take a horse that he 

 has never seen or ridden before through a cross-country 

 run to hounds, and bring him in at the death without 

 exhausting him as much as his owner would, although the 

 latter may be as good a horseman and lighter in weight. 

 Every hunting-field affords examples of this, which cannot 

 be accounted for by difference of horsemanship. Writers 

 on hunting all agree that some men can make a horse do 

 most incredible things, and attribute this wonderful power 

 of control to " better hands," " better seat," or what not. 

 It must be admitted that a person with very bad hands or 

 a bad seat, or both, may irritate a horse and take more 

 out of him in a run than a man with perfect hands and 

 seat ; but an explanation on this basis does not account for 

 the fact that a better rider and a lighter can come through 

 a run with the better-conditioned horse pumped to a turn, 

 while another man who has ridden the same line brings 

 his horse in comparatively fresh ; or that two such men 

 may change horses in the next run and find the results 

 change too. The fact has been demonstrated so often in 

 every hunting-field that I need not enlarge upon it, except 

 to say we must look further than any theory as to hands 

 and seat, or of the power of love, in explanation of such 

 phenomena. 



Most of my readers have doubtless seen, at exhibitions 

 throughout the country, examples of the wonderful control 

 some men have over animals, the wild becoming tame, the 



