

THE RIDER. 195 



reason why for every mishap. Now his * confounded fellow ' 

 has given him the wrong bridle, now the wrong saddle ; this 

 time his stirrups are too short, that time his curb chain was 

 too tight the lineal descendant of Captain Guano, that dis- 

 tinguished follower of the ' Mangeysterne ' hounds, may be 

 met with to-day in every county of England. Sometimes a 

 hound crosses him at a critical moment ; sometimes his good 

 nature prevails, and he forfeits his place, if not his day's sport, 

 to help a friend ; at others, just at that precious moment when 

 the crowd have been choked off, and the real good ones have 

 settled to their work, he loses a shoe. Of this favourite device 

 to conceal the failings either of horse or rider, an amusing 

 story is told. During a very fast and straight gallop in 

 Leicestershire a rider was observed walking his horse leisurely 

 down a field towards a stiff fence, holding a shoe in his hand. 

 ' What's the matter ? ' hailed a passing friend, * why don't you 

 screw him at it ? ' A sorrowful shake of the head, with a demon- 

 stration of the shoe, was the only answer. ' Why, my good 

 fellow,' observed a too curious third party, * your horse has got 

 four shoes on \ ' In short, with men of these delicate suscepti- 

 bilities, everybody and everything is to blame except their own 

 want of pluck, decision, or skill. 



No doubt the first essential to a good rider to hounds is 

 courage. True, courage alone will not make one, but without 

 courage, it may be said that all other qualities, the finest hands, 

 the firmest seat, the surest judgment, are of no avail. Now, 

 courage is of two sorts, moral and physical, and of these the 

 first, in the hunting field as everywhere else, is the rarest. 

 The man who has not the latter in sufficient quantity to enable 

 him to make his way over a stiffly fenced country, may possibly 

 have enough of the former to confess his weakness. From 

 such we withhold our contempt ; though perhaps not our pity. 

 But for one of these you will probably find twenty of those. 

 How often, too, one hears it said of a young and inexperienced 

 rider : ' So-and-so goes like a fool, who doesn't know his 

 danger ; wait till he has had a real bad fall, and see how he 



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