SHOOTING COATS. 173 



district finding scent but indifferent, even though the well- 

 soaked turf was all their field could want for foothold or for 

 fall. 



I am fain to allow that the hunting field of October, even 

 with a pack of fame and fashion, does not behave very well to 

 itself as far as personal adornment goes the ladies of course 

 excepted, for do they ever insult themselves by self- neglect I 

 and has it not been written that " if she be but young and fair, 

 she hath the grace to know it ? " In these days a man has 

 probably in his wardrobe more smoking coats than shooting 

 coats. (By the way, what a radiant field we should have if, on 

 an occasional day, say, once a week on the Leamington side, the 

 order for covertside parade were " smoking coats ! ") A man 

 of the humbler sort especially unless, as sometimes happens, 

 his tastes in life carry him no further afield than a hot corner 

 and a warm drawing-room allows himself one decent suit of 

 tweed apparel at a time, in the which he travels, and in which 

 he associates with his country neighbour. For the wife of his 

 bosom and the toilers of the stableyard he reserves the old 

 c lo' already rather " better " than half worn out. In these, 

 too, he carries out his shooting, his colt-schooling, and his- 

 general round of work or idleness. The hunting-day then 

 arrives, with a gloomy ceiling significant of drenching showers ; 

 and, besides, he is going into a plough country, with a five-year- 

 old and a very fair certainty of a dirty fall. To-morrow the 

 Johnsons are coming to lunch. Mr. J. is always neat and smart 

 as a novus homo should be, and pretty Mrs. J. is not at all the 

 sort of woman before whom to appear in a threadbare coat. 

 No, the new garment must stop at home ; the shabby jacket go 

 a-hunting ; and, somehow or other, the same chain of circum- 

 stance and reasoning seems to have had a hand in clothing nine 

 out of ten of his somewhat shabby comrades of the day. 



Look to your colours, ye ladies of Leicestershire ! To the 

 county of Northampton belong the first honours of justice to 

 the national cloth the scarlet of heroism in war and chase. 

 What the dames have done for politics and for patriotism, the 



