438 The Book of the Horse. 



Whyte Melville's Honourable Frederick Crasher. On the question of getting up early, Charles 

 Buxton wrote very wisely, " Getting up early is a good thing if it comes of itself — that is 

 from going to bed early ; but if you don't allow nature her quantum of sleep, you burn the 

 candle at both ends, and the time you steal from sleep you lose in vigour ; in fact you shorten 

 your life." Wealthy men can afford to buy hunting-machines, able to gallop and jump 

 magnificently on soft ground, positively dangerous on the hard high-road. Such was Assheton 

 Smith's crooked-legged Jack o' Lantern. But the real spirit of sport burns in many breasts 

 not provided with incomes which make stud expenses a secondary consideration. 



The hack, in an economically-managed stud, is one of the hunters, who gets his exercise 

 and makes himself useful at the same time ; or it is a four-year-old not yet taken into work, 

 but exercised, accustomed to the sight and sound of hounds, and ridden by a steady groom 

 (who has brought on the hunter of the day), a little way after hounds have found. In dry 

 weather there is no pleasanter way of getting to cover than on a good galloping or smooth- 

 trotting little hack, especially when a good part of ten miles or more may be done by short 

 cuts over bridle roads, through field gates, with here and there a gap to be jumped. It forms 

 a harmonious overture to the fox-hunting opera, and makes an enthusiast feel extremely 

 eager for the hottest fun of the day, if fun there should be. 



When the distance is long or the roads muddy, with rain threatening, wheels, whether 



they be attached to mail phaeton, ladies' phaeton, wagonette with a party, or any of the 



numerous forms of dog-cart, have the advantage of conveying the fox-hunter clean and dry 



to the cover side— , . „ 



i resh from his carnage as bridegroom on marriage. 



If there are ladies of the party, who are not horsewomen, they may see more or less of a run, and 

 dispense much appreciated hospitality, in the blank intervals of a long day, in a well-horsed, 

 long-bodied wagonette, driven by a groom who knows the country. 



A four-in-hand drag, or cliar-a-baiic, is never more in its place than when conveying a 

 party to cover-side ; a tandem has almost an appearance of being of real use, harnessed to a 

 well-loaded two-wheeled dog-cart, in a hilly country, and may be employed to get or keep 

 a hunter, as leader, in condition ; while to descend to the most economical level, a fast pony, 

 in a Battlesdcn car, is a very perfect conveyance for two sportsmen and a boy-groom. But 

 there is one condition essential for any enjoyment in going on wheels to cover — the horse or 

 horses must be fast. To crawl along sticky lanes at the rate of seven miles an hour, behind 

 a wheezy cob, is purgatory in an acute form. The last mode of getting to a meet by rail is 

 familiar to those who hunt with stag-hounds from the metropolis, and with fox-hounds from 

 Oxford. Their once familiar charge of " a tandem " or " hack on " has almost disappeared 

 from the bills of Symonds and Tollett. 



In a complete stud there is always at least one light-weight groom, a steady lad, whose 

 business it is to take the hunter to cover-side, at such a pace as to bring him there as fresh as 

 possible ; but the young fox-hunter must take care how, under the idea of saving his horse, 

 he trusts him to a scratch groom, hired for the job. He may find that halts at public-houses, 

 and gallops to make up for lost time, have taken a good deal more out of his favourite than 

 if he had ridden the whole distance himself. 



Heavy weights must send on to cover, and save their hunter by dismounting and walking 

 at every convenient opportunity, if they wish to make the best of the few extraordinary runs 

 that fall to one man's share in one season. 



There is no more luxurious conve^-ancc than a railway carriage. Hunting-season tickets 



