170 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



peared to think a good deal about their dinners, as will 

 appear from the conduct of Mr. Slyboots, whom we found 

 at home on the second day of our meeting. The distance 

 from the kennel was about twelve miles, nine of which 

 we had to grind along on a turnpike road, composed of 

 flints and gravel. I always rode with the hounds to the 

 place of meeting ; in fact, they were never trusted to the 

 tender mercies of a whipper-in. We left the kennel 

 together, and upon our return in the evening the hounds 

 had their dinner always before I had mine. In those 

 days a good dinner had little attractions for me, and I 

 made a point of never dining out on my own hunting 

 days, or allowing my host to wait dinner on my account. 

 Arrived at the place of meeting, the first to make his 

 appearance was an aged divine, mounted upon a clever 

 and powerful horse, well fitted for the country, and the 

 weight he had to carry over, or rather through it. The 

 reverend gentleman was one of the old school — a good 

 scholar, excellent preacher, of gentlemanly manners ; in 

 short, " Faetus ad unguem homo,'' but quite orthodox. 

 Attached to his old theories, and, as a matter of course, 

 a zealous defender of Mr. Slowman, his pack, and all the 

 rest of the family of Sloes or Slows — either will do — as 

 though, strange it may appear, black seemed the pre- 

 vailing colour in this country, even to top-boots — the 

 tops I mean — coats and inexpressibles no exception. 

 Mr. Slowman's red coat, or rather originally of that 

 colour, had assumed from long wear the appearance of a 

 dark purple, his boot tops had received so many dashes 

 from the blacking-brush, that you could scarcely tell 

 where the tops ended, or the legs began. His inex- 

 pressibles, of dark corduroy when new, had now followed 



