22 THE HUNTING FIELD 



every one they come thwart of. If a shooter was to 

 make himself as unhappy about a bad day's sport 

 as some foxhunters do, what a booby we should think 

 him. " Better luck next time," is a fine consoling 

 axiom, cheering alike to the foxhunter, the gunner, 

 and the fisherman. Foxhunting is but a species of 

 game, and whether a fox is killed, or a fox is lost, 

 or a fox is mobbed, or a fox is earthed, makes no 

 difference in the balance at the banker's — that con- 

 verging point to which so many anxious earthly 

 hopes turn. 



Gentlemen, when they begin to do a thing, are 

 very apt to do too much. They think if they take 

 the Mastership of hounds that they must slave and 

 toil like servants. Then we have a lot of babblement 

 about "science," "condition," "generative economy," 

 " jF^thiop's mineral," and we don't know what. Can 

 science make a scent? "Kennel management," and 

 all that sort of thing, is very necessary ; but experi- 

 ence proves that a man may be a first-rate sports- 

 man without troubling himself about minutiae. Mr. 

 Masters, if we mistake not, was no great kennelman, 

 and we should like to have a look at any one with 

 the boldness to deny his prowess in the field. The 

 best gentleman-huntsman of the present day never 

 feeds his hounds. We have even known paid hunts- 

 men who never saw their's except in the hunting 

 field. 



The well bred hound — the well bred sporting dog 

 of any sort — will always leave the man who feeds it 

 for the man who shows it sport. 



All economists, political ones and all, agree in the 

 inexpediency of keeping a dog and barking one's- 

 self ; neither is it of any use a Master keeping servants 

 and doing their work. The more trouble a man 

 takes the more anxious he gets, and the more he 

 expects ; hence a great deal of that nervous irrita- 

 bility in the hunting field which is almost its only 



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