Rum to Look at, Good to Go. 429 



your horse, eitlier to ease him in ascending steep hills, or to get through a cramped place, 

 or to relieve him of your weight in returning home on a cold night after a fatiguing day. 

 It is therefore wise to teach your horses to follow you freely on either right or left hand, 

 neither dragging back nor rushing at you over a fence. This is an accomplishment easily 

 taught, and best taught by the young sportsman himself, with a pocketful of short carrots, 

 a gig-whip, and a leading-rein, according to Rarey's plan. A few summer evenings spent in 

 pushing through gaps leading over ditches, and even low stiles, is time well spent ; but for 

 perfection the hunter must learn to know and love his master's voice. 



Abraham Cawston, a heavy farmer, a first-rate sportsman, who used to hunt the South 

 Essex hounds, a clay country intersected by ditches and hedges, had a pony which always 

 went first over cramped places, the farmer hanging on by the tail ! 



After the enumeration of the various perfections of a hunter, it is right to add that in 

 every hunting-field there are to be found -odd and apparently ill-shaped brutes steered by 

 bold, practised, determined riders, who keep pace with, and sometimes out-pace, hunters of 

 perfect form and priceless value ; but these waifs and straj's of sport, however coarse they 

 may appear in head and heels, are always, if the truth were known, well-bred. 



Tom Edge, the silent humble companion of Mr. Assheton Smith, who never spoke 

 unless Mr. Smith spoke to him, never rode less than eighteen stone. In a very good thing, 

 thirteen miles without a check, there were only four up, Assheton Smith and Tom Edge 

 being two of the four. Minutes elapsed before any of the field got up ; yet the horse Edge 

 rode, Gayman, was " a queer-looking creature, thin neck, large head, raw hips, and a rat tail, 

 for all the world like a seventeen-hands dog-horse. You couldn't get your hand between 

 his front legs, they were so close ; he always had to wear boots " (" Silk and Scarlet "). The 

 murdered Earl of Mayo, also a crushing weight, rode just such an animal in the first flight 

 in Northamptonshire. 



" When I was young," wrote Charles Buxton, " I bought horses by their looks. I was 

 careful to see whether they had good shoulders, were well ribbed up, nd so on. Now I 

 am old [he was then forty-five], what I want to know is how he goes ; if he can go well I 

 am sure he is made well. 



A comparatively slow horse, if an extraordinary and resolute jumper, will often get 

 the best of much faster horses in a five-and-twenty minutes' burst, if a few very stiff and 

 awkward fences intersect the first half-dozen fields. A harum-scarum youth on a horse not 

 worth thirty pounds will often clear stiff timber, or trot up to a double hog-backed stile, and, 

 dropping like a cat into a rough lane, leave a dozen two-hundred guinea nags pounded. 



The man who cannot afford expensive horses should have them clever and in first-rate 

 condition. 



There is a piece of sound sense in the following lines, dedicated by Mark King to Lady 

 Florence Dixie, whom few men can beat in a sharp run. 



THE BE.ST OF A MODERATE LOT.* 



How a dealer would turn up his nose, 



How he'd sneer at that curious trot, 

 If I sought, for his coin, to exchange 



The best of my moderate lot. 



• Sfioiliii^ Gazette, July, 1S77. 



