HUNTING ABROAD 149 



don't speak to any one unless they speak to you. The 

 English are wonderfully loyal and, bar none, the best 

 friends in the world, and when you get to know them 

 you will perhaps agree with Balzac, that "the deeper 

 the feeling the less demonstrative will be the expres- 

 sion of it," and you will wish that there were more 

 people like them. But as a nation they are hard to 

 get to know ; they live in a shell of reserve which they 

 dislike to have even touched, and the only way to 

 get on with them is to retire into just such a shell 

 yourself and be equally as exclusive and reserved as 

 they are. 



If you are quiet, well-mannered, well-dressed, well- 

 mounted, and above all show yourself to be a fine 

 horseman or horsewoman and a good sport, you will, 

 before the end of the season, have no end of friends. 

 As Stevenson says: "What religion knits people so 

 closely as a common sport?" 



Choosing one's own line at home is often difficult 

 enough, but in a strange land it is almost impossible 

 to attempt it without running the risk of innumerable 

 falls. Unless one has had some previous experience, 

 or has some standard of comparison to go by, it is 

 impossible to judge what is jumpable, in the shape of 

 a drain, or hedge or bank, and what is not. I remem- 

 ber that on my first day out with the Meath, all the 

 banks looked to me like objects in a nightmare, and 

 utterly unjumpable; but after the second and third 

 day, when I had discovered that these horrible-looking 

 affairs were not only jumpable, but quite easily so, I 

 went to the other extreme and charged what proved 

 evidently to be quite unjumpable. They all looked 

 alike to me, on the same principle, I suppose, that to 

 an Englishman or an Irishman, unaccustomed to 



