186 HOKSES AND HOUNDS. 



A good and jovial sportsman remarked one day to some of 

 the field, " Well, gentlemen, I cannot say mucli as regards tlie 

 hunting part of it, but I candidly admit yours is the best six 

 o'clock country I have ever been in ; and if we cannot go very 

 fast over these flinty fallows, we certainly do go the pace over 

 the mahogany in the evening, and I pronounce your country in 

 that respect second to none." Our entertainers did tlieir best to 

 amuse us, and their hospitality was unbounded. Dinner parties 

 every day in the week ; so that we had rather hard work, taking 

 the day and night together. The foxes also appeared to think 

 a good deal about their dinners, as will appear from the conduct 

 of Mr. Slyboots, whom we found at home on the second day of 

 our meeting. The distance from the kennel was about twelve 

 miles, nine of which we had to grind along on a turnpike road, 

 composed of flints and gravel. I always rode with the hounds 

 to the place of meeting ; in fact, they were seldom trusted to 

 the tender mercies of a whipper-in. We left the kennel toge- 

 ther, and upon our return in the evening the hounds had their 

 dinner always before I had mine. In those days a good dinner 

 had little attractions for me, and I made a point of never dining 

 out on my own hunting days, or allowing my host to wait din- 

 ner on my account. 



Arrived at the place of meeting, the first to make his appear- 

 ance was an aged divine, mounted upon a clever and powerful 

 horse, well fitted for the country, and the weight he had to carry 

 over, or rather through it. The reverend gentleman was one of 

 the old school — a good scholar, excellent preacher, of gentle- 

 manly manners ; in short, Factus ad unguem homo, but quite 

 orthodox. Attached to his old theories, and, as a matter of 

 course, a zealous defender of Mr. Slowman, _ his pack, and all 

 the rest of tlie family of Sloes or Slows — either will do — as 

 though, strange it may appear, hlack seemed the prevailing 

 colour in this country, even to top-boots — the tops, I mean — 

 coats and inexpressibles no exception. Mr. Slowman's red coat, 

 or rather originally of that colour, had assumed from long wear 

 the appearance of a dark purple, his boot-tops had received so 

 many dashes from the blacking-brush, that you coukl scarcely 

 tell where the tops ended, or the legs began. His inexpres- 

 sibles, of dark corduroy when new, had now followed suit, and, 

 with the assistance of dirt and grease, had become of a most 

 sombre hue. The hounds, too, were nearly all dark colours 

 also, and the whippers-in as to costume quite on a par with 

 their leader. The country was dirty enough, and taking them 

 altogether, men, horses, and hounds, the most dark looking lot 

 I had ever met with. They had, however, their merits — the 



