PRELIMINARY CANTERS. 179 



With the arrival of October and its rainfall, cub-hunting of 

 course assumed its much brighter aspect. The ground softened, 

 the code of discipline expanded, brief scurries into the open 

 became possible and often advisable, the hour of meeting was 

 soon somewhat more human, and men's hearts opened to the 

 change. Galloping was now and then admitted as legitimate ; 

 an occasional leap almost justifiable ; the glow of exercise and 

 excitement became once more visible ; and the ice was fairly 

 broken. With a wetter soil came a better scent. Hounds 

 could hold their cub in hand from find to worry ; and the 

 month that we have long learned to look upon as the happiest, 

 because the least overdone yet the most unbroken, of the 

 sporting year, showed forth in its full freshness. " Plenty of 

 foxes, ca-r-pital scent, never saw the young lot enter better ; " 

 such was the report from every competent mouthpiece in the 

 rnerry Midlands. It may have differed in degree, and its 

 paragraphs varied in emphasis, but the tune was the same ; and 

 I take it that you who are only now plunging in medias, with 

 all the pomp and circumstance (i.e. 9 new clothes) of November, 

 may accept the prospects as hopeful in the extreme. Some of 

 you will go to Melton, many will go to Rugby, and a few to 

 Harboro' too few (for was not Market Harboro' well nigh as 

 mighty, and quite as hard, as Melton itself, within the memory 

 of many who are not so particularly grey nor so very palpably 

 bald and bulky even now). There are other little haunts 

 very accessible too, and rapidly becoming more fashionable as 

 their merits get whispered abroad. But of these it is high 

 treason in the eyes of the early discoverers to speak save in 

 terms of faintest praise for what right have strangers from 

 afar to come poaching upon preserves that first settlers had 

 intended keeping strictly for themselves ? Have I not many 

 years ago heard even a very minor member of the great fox- 

 hunting metropolis deliver himself loudly in such strain, and 

 call malediction fierce on the gross presumption that then 

 dictated new arrivals ? 'Tis not very difficult to learn where the 

 cakes and ale of the chase are to be found ; and surely these 



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