HOW TO BRING A HUNTER HOME. 87 



there is no great necessity to see them drink it, the 

 landlord's smiling invitation is accepted, and in a few 

 minutes, by one of those extraordinary contingencies that 

 nobody could have anticipated, each gentleman rider is 

 to be seen, in high glee and good-humour, sipping 

 from a tumbler (which for some quaint reason or other 

 happens to contain a silver spoon) something that is 

 evidently very wet and very warm. Alas ! little 

 thinking that his poor faithful horse, whose perform- 

 ances he had so lately been describing, with cold clammy 

 ears is shivering, chilled by having just drank too freely 

 of "a summut," without a spoon in it, that was wet 

 and cold. 



On mounting, and clattering out of the paved yard of 

 the hotel, most of the riders fancy they are all the better 

 many of their horses feel that they are all the worse 

 for the half hour's rest and " gruelling " that was ordered 

 for them. But although the quadrupeds leave behind 

 them the fatal pail, the silver spoon has apparently 

 accompanied the bipeds, who, like the favoured children 

 of Fortune, are, externally as well as internally, under 

 the influence of ardent spirits. 



All thoroughly happy, they think neither of their 

 horses nor their homes ; but, according to the subject of 

 their conversation, and the state of their cigars, they 

 walk, trot, sometimes very slow, and sometimes very 



