Gentlemen Riders 



once, when staying at Althorpe, which might have ended 

 disastrously. The ladies having gone to bed, and Lord Spencer, 

 ' Bay,' and myself all alone in the billiard-room, we thought 

 we could not do better than finish up the evening with a 

 good bear-fight. Accordingly * Bay ' set the ball rolling by 

 shying a lemon at me across the billiard room. I picked it 

 up and threw it back as hard as I could, with the result 

 that, cannoning off * Bay,' it flew through the half open-door 

 of the adjoining library, now all in darkness ; a tremendous 

 crash of broken glass announcing the fact that its career had 

 ended in a catastrophe of some sort. Terrified beyond measure 

 — our noble host, perhaps, most of all — the one thought 

 uppermost in the minds of all three of us at that trying moment 

 was, you may depend, " What will Lady Spencer say ? " For 

 in the next room, just where the noise came from, as none 

 knew better than ourselves, there reposed, under a glass cover, 

 a valuable china ship, quite unique in its way, I believe, and 

 worth at the very least ;^30,ooo. Silently and sadly we seized 

 a candle each to guide our trembling footsteps to the scene of 

 disaster, and our relief can be better imagined than described 

 when we found, on arrival, that the lemon, after smashing 

 through the glass case, had embedded itself in the ship without 

 doing the slightest damage. There was no more bear-fighting 

 that night. 



"In my younger days," continues the Prince, " 'Bay' was 

 quite my beau ideal of a first-rate rider to hounds. Though 

 his was rather a military seat, it was not in the least stiff — on 

 the contrary, very elastic; and I don't think I ever saw a 

 man in more perfect unison with his horse than he was. 

 Whether they were fresh or tired, he kept his horses always 

 perfectly balanced, and, as a consequence, had no superior 

 in putting a horse at a fence. Out hunting, he and his horse 



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