162 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



treatment that names had been given them in their youth, with 

 the intent that they should come when they were called, and 

 not before. The difficulty of inculcating this principle was by 

 no means facilitated by the fact that several recent additions 

 to the pack had arrived without register of baptism or other 

 record whatever. The next day was very similarly employed, 

 very similar advantage being taken by the leading miscreants 

 of the opportunities offered by the morning's exercise. On the 

 third day, virtue (the virtue of sublime resignation, and of trust 

 in a merciful fate) had to be made of necessity, and the public 

 gaze faced at the opening meet. Ye huntsmen of Merrie 

 England, who from April to November can throw all your 

 energies into the schooling of your ten to twenty couple of 

 juveniles, whom it is proposed to incorporate with three times 

 their number of steady veterans tell me, what bribe would 

 you accept to place yourself in such a situation as this ? Put 

 reputation on one side and think only of the personal misery 

 of such a plight. Think of the shameful dread, of the agonised 

 anticipation, of the excruciating attempts at appearing cheerful, 

 placid, and confident, when all the time your mental condition 

 would be, as Mr. Bumble put it, that of " sitting on broken 

 bottles;" and say, would any price induce you to accept the 

 position ? 



True, the field was scarcely of the class we hope to see on 

 the 1st prox. (or thereabouts) at Kirby Gate, though from many 

 points of resemblance it might possibly aspire to rank with that 

 sent out by some of our sporting spas (other, of course, than 

 Handley Cross). But, as we are all aware, knowledge of a 

 subject is by no means a sine qua non to criticism upon it ; 

 moreover, the backslidings and offences developed by the pack 

 of the season '77, in their two first mornings' exercise had gone 

 from mouth to mouth, and ear to ear rapidity of transmission, 

 strange to say, blunting in no degree the points of the story, 

 nor even deducting from the variety and number of its inci- 

 dents. Indeed, of such terrific significance were some of the 

 tales abroad, that more than one timid fair one stayed at home, 



