370 " NIL TAM DIFFICILE EST QUOD," ETC. ETC. 



People may say that, professing myself a fox-hunter, 

 and not more nervous than my neighbours, my first 

 thought should have been which way I could again get 

 to the hounds. Candour compels me to allow I made no 

 such inquiry; but I instanter made another "which 

 was my way home ! " With all appendages on me I 

 usually ride about list. ; I think I rode home thirteen 

 at least, allowing for twenty-eight honest pounds of 

 bog- adhesive mixture. I looked black enough then, 

 and my friends told me I looked blue enough when 

 they met me at dinner, till their hospitality made me 

 take sundry bumpers to their continued and my better 

 success. Success to them ! I would get into another 

 bog to meet such companions. 



The next day I considered 1 could suit the country 

 to a tittle ; so I mounted a mare I had, though not at 

 all one of my sort, for she was just fast enough to 

 drive a wheelbarrow ; but you could twist her round 

 on a cabbage leaf, and as to fencing, nothing a quad- 

 ruped, from a Hendon deer to a Skye terrier, could 

 get through or over in size or intricacy came amiss to 

 her. We had another glorious find : the varmint came 

 almost under my mare's nose. At such a moment no 

 true enthusiast in fox-hunting can be, or ought to be, 

 in perfect possession of his sober senses : it is madden- 

 ing. I had, however, sense enough to know that 

 nothing but getting first start would do for "sober 

 Mary :" so off I went by the side of the first two or 

 three couple of hounds, and, without any gasconade, 

 I verily believe I lay with them Jive hundred yards ; 

 but soon I lay by the side of " prostrate Mary," for 

 galloping over some dry ground covered with leaves, 

 and consequently in perfect confidence of no bog being 

 in the way, in went Mary up to her breast in a hole, 



