Ladies in the Hunting Field. 



453 



"A RUM ONE TO FOLLOW, A BAD ONE TO BEAT. 



" Come, I'll give you the health of a man we all know, 

 A man we all swear by, a friend of our own ; 



With the hounds running hardest, he 's safest to go, 

 And he's often in front, and he's often alone — 



A rider unequalled, a sportsman complete, 



A rum one to follow, a bad one to beat. 



*' As he sits on the saddle, a baby could tell 

 He can hustle a sticker, a flyer can spare ; 



He has science and nerve, and decision as well ; 

 He knows where he's going, and means to be there. 



" We threw off at the Castle, we found in the holt ; 



Like wildfire the beauties went streaming away, 

 From the rest of the field he came out like a bolt. 



And he tackled to work like a schoolboy at play. 



" 'Twas a caution, I vow, but to see the man ride ! 



O'er the rough and the smooth he went sailing along, 

 And what Providence sent him he took in his stride, 



Though the ditches were deep and the fences were strong, 



" Ere they'd run for a mile there was room in the front. 

 Such a scatter and squander you never did see ! 



And I honestly own I'd been out of the hunt 



But the broad of his back was the beacon for me ; 



So I kept him in sight, and was proud of the feat — 



This rum one to follow, this bad one to beat ! 



***** 



" For a place I liked better I hastened to seek, 

 But the place I liked better I sought for in vain ; 



And I honestly own, if the truth I must speak, 

 That I never caught sight of my leader again." 



TO LADIES HUNTING. 



Whether the hunting-field is a proper place for ladies is a question not worth arguing, 

 because it is one in which mere argument is not likely to alter convictions or control tastes. 

 Although many ladies have been persuaded to attend the meets, and ride more or less hard 

 with hounds, by the arguments of lovers or husbands, by the example of friends, or by the 

 incalculable force of propinquity, the instances are very rare in which a lady who had really 

 enjoyed hunting, who contmued to reside in a hunting country, and been able to afford to 

 keep hunters and ride them, has given up the sport on the ground of its being unfeminine 

 or improper. Sometimes loss of health, sometimes diminished income, sometimes the cares 

 of an increasing family, rob the hunting-field of its brightest ornaments. Sometimes ladies 

 who have been the gayest of the gay, and even the fastest of the fast, renounce hunting, 

 with other worldly amusements, in favour of some ascetic form of devotion ; but they do 

 not expunge hunting alone from relaxation ; they give it up with dancing, theatres, novel- 

 reading, because they are pleasant amusements, and because they have arrived at the conclusion 

 that everything that is pleasant is wrong. Women, like men, who feel at home on horseback, 

 hunt because they enjoy it, and give it up when they cease to enjoy it, without any profound 

 arguments either way. 



The habit of making excuses for indulgences that are pleasant was never better satirised 

 than by Quin, the actor, who, entering a tavern, in the days when gentlemen frequented 

 taverns, and hearing one fop drawl out, "Waiter! give me a glass of brandy-and-water, 

 because I am so hot!" and another of the same tribe, "Waiter! give me a glass, because I 

 am so cold,'-" roared out in his gruffest tones, "Waiter! give me a glass, because I like it." 

 Right or wrong, the tastes of ladies for the hunting-field extends amongst us with the annual 

 increase of wealth and luxury. The number of women who really can ride up to hounds will 

 always remain limited, being most probably in tolerably near proportion to the percentage 

 of first-flight men out of a Quorn or Pytchley field. 



In the last, and beginning of the present century, before the third pommel of the side- 

 saddle was invented, very few ladies rode to hounds. One of the most distinguished was 



