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CHAPTER XXI. 



TRAINING FOR HUNTING — RIDING TO COVER — RIDING WITH HOUNDS. 



Necessity of Preparation by Training for Violent Exercise — Tlie Author's Experience — How to get Exercise in a Town — 

 Baths : their Use — Cub-hunting the Best Preparation — Going to Cover — Behaviour — First Lesson — Your Own Insigniii- 

 cance —Silence is Gold at Cover-side — The Way to Cover — Riding your Hunter of the Day, or a Hunter for Exercise, 

 or a Real Hack — Advantages of Wheels : Dog-cart, Phaeton-drag, Tandem, Wagonette — The Light-weight Groom — 

 Railway Conveyances: The Latest Luxury a Pullman's Car— Riding to Hounds — "A Word Ere we Start" — Requisites 

 for First-flight Men — Audacity in Flying Countries — Ruffian often First — The "Leading Article" — The "Following 

 Article " — The Sort to be Studied — Gate-opening a Useful Art — " Do not Speak to the Man at the Wheel " — Advice 

 when Hounds are Drawing — Ready, not too Ready — The Find — The Rush — Tally Ho, Away ! — Keep your Eye on 

 Leading Hounds — Egerton Warburton's Ballad — The Field of a Run Analysed — Small Percentage of Straight Riders- 

 Sketch of Pytchley Country by a Native — Poetical Advice — Importance of Blood — Condition in Man and Horse — Of 

 Decision — To Ride or Not to Ride, that is the Question — Small Enclosures Easier Hunting — Hunter for the First 

 Season must Creep and Fly — Timber-jumping — Its Importance — Dick Christian on Riding in tlie "Sliires" — Falls to be 

 Avoided in Training a Hunter — Sir James Musgrave and Tom Heycock — The Honourable Grantley Berkeley's Hints — 

 Leaping in Cold Blood and Larking Spoil Hunters — Water-jumping — Big Waters Stops the Field : Why, and Why 

 Dangerous — Anecdote of Brook-jumping with Stag-hounds — Another of a Cob with Harriers and Hind — A Stereograph 

 of a Water-jump from the "Brooks of Bridlemere " — Lady Julia's Slang — Falling an Art and an Instinct — Old Horses 

 Fall worse than Young Ones — Pleasures ot Memory after a Run — Beware of Boasting — Captain Anstruther Thompson 

 as M. F. H. — Poetical Sketch of — Ladies Hunting — How — First Class, Second Class, Third Class — The Old Marchioness 

 of Salisbury — Increase of Hunting Ladies — Three Hunting, Hard-riding Countesses — A Clever Hunter Essential for a 

 Lady — The Hunting Side-saddle — Hunting-bridle — The Pilot — The Honourable Mrs. Jack V.'s Pilot : his Fee — The 

 Young Ladies who are a Nuisance — Ladies' Hunting Costume Requirements. 



No man engaged in sedentary summer and autumn pursuits can enjoy a fast or a long day 

 with hounds without a certain degree of preparation. Without preliminary training, a fast 

 five-and-twenty minutes, with a fair share of "fencing" on the first day of his season, will 

 tax, in a very painful manner, the action of the heart and lungs of a man who has been 

 using his head and not exercising his body ; and if, in addition, when the hounds leave off, 

 there are fifteen or twenty miles to ride home, the unaccustomed sportsman will be stiff and 

 sore from head to foot for a fortnight. Expcrto crede. I never endured more agony in my 

 Hfe than in the last ten minutes of a fast thirty minutes, ridden on a perfect thorough-bred 

 hunter, with a good start, with the Milton hounds over a gra.ss country. My summer had 

 been occupied day and night with Parliamentary committees and literary work ; my rides 

 had been limited to Hansom cabs ; my labours had been sustained by strong coffee, cham- 

 pagne luncheons, and the sort of dinners which successful railway promoters gave in the 

 days when George Hudson was a king. With such preparation I was not half an hour in 

 the saddle before I was doing my best to keep in sight one of the best packs of hounds in 

 England, running with scent " breast-high." By instinct, good luck, a horse that never 

 swerved a line from his fences, and a despairing grip of the breast-plate, I kept my seat 

 over the last fence of the field when the hounds ran into their enemy in the open, but I 

 was speechless, black in the face, my heart going like the engine of an express train, and 



