296 THE HUNTING FIELD 



anything to catch a husband herself. She uses the 

 common figure of speech, in fact, or, rather, the 

 common figure of he — a figure so common, that if 

 all men were married it might be abolished, for it 

 only does for the bachelors, and those must be of the 

 soft order, who believe it. 



A man is not a match for a woman till he's married. 

 That is an aphorism to which all Benedicts will assent. 

 Our friend Sir Rasper Smashgate is in a somewhat 

 similar predicament to the half-starved costermonger's 

 horse, whose guardian boy declared had plenty of 

 corn only he "hadn't got no time to eat it." Smash- 

 gate is matrimonially inclined, at all events he has 

 no objection to matrimony, only hunting leaves him 

 no time for making love. We should apologise to 

 the baronet for not sooner sketching him, but the 

 same sort of difficulty has attended our efforts — we 

 never knew where we had him. Our reminiscent 

 readers will perhaps recal that in the early part of 

 these papers we mentioned the fact of Mr. Cotton- 

 wool having been partly converted to foxhunting, or 

 rather fox-preserving, from having seen Henrietta in 

 the grasp of Smashgate (waltzing, or attempting to 

 waltz, as far as the Smasher was concerned), which, 

 aided by the promptings of the ambitious Mrs. Wool, 

 had induced our friend to have the Master and 

 " Co." to feed (vide No. i of these papers). That 

 man " Co.," as the country lad in London wrote to 

 his father, " is a great man — he is in partnership 

 with almost everybody;" but the Co. in this case 

 was meant to include all the members of the hunt, 

 or, perhaps, more correctly speaking, it was meant 

 for Sir Rasper in particular and for the hunt in 

 general. Sir Rasper was to be " Co." As the best 

 laid plans, however, will occasionally miscarry, so, 

 in this instance, Mrs. Cottonwool's project went awry. 

 On the day of the dinner, which Sir Rasper accepted 

 " conditionally," as indeed he accepts all his invita- 



