194 HUNTING. 



himself left to his own guidance, remember this : always to keep 

 well down wind, to have his eyes well in front of him, and his 

 ears well open, whereby he will not only avoid any too sudden 

 intrusion on the line, but may even prove of some use at a 

 critical moment to his more daring neighbours : 



He who has watched, not shared the fight, 

 Knows how the day has gone. 



And it is very possible that the judicious roadster may be able 

 on occasions to tell the huntsman a little more about his fox 

 than that functionary is always in a position himself to know. 

 Finally — and this for his own especial comfort and safety — 

 let him remember that, as has been pertinently observed, 

 the man who never jumps at all can by no possibility be 

 'pounded,' and let him never enter a field without being as 

 certain of his egress as of his ingress. In the hunting field, as 

 elsewhere, half measures will always prove fatal in the long run. 

 If he means ' going,' let him ' go ; ' if he means riding the 

 roads, let him ride them. Not to every man falls the luck 

 that fell to Mr. Sawyer on the memorable day he rode Marathon 

 to sell. But to turn to the riders. 



Egerton Warburton has, with his usual dexterity, hit off the 

 ideal of a ' good man to hounds : ' 



Give me the man to whom nought comes amiss. 

 One horse or another, that country or this ; 

 Who through falls or bad starts undauntedly still 

 Rides up to the motto, be with them I ivill. 



It might be broadly said that the opposite of this ideal would 

 be a good definition of a bad man. The man who never gets 

 a start, who is always falling, who can only go well on a par- 

 ticular sort of horse, over a particular sort of country, on a 

 particular sort of day — one could hardly with truth speak of 

 such a one as a 'good man to hounds,' however forward he 

 might show when all his necessary conditions were granted. 

 But lower still in the scale, and far lower, comes the man of 

 excuses ; he who has an explanation for every contingency, a 



