The Heythrop. 201 



'wall is in itself a pleasurable^ and encouraging leap. 

 Horses can make no mistake^ and seldom fail to jump 

 it safely and well. Even should they be a little care- 

 less, the wall rarely takes advantage of them — but 

 allows its upper story to crumble quietly before the 

 onslaught. There being no ditch on either side, you 

 can give your horse full leisure with a view to his 

 jumping off his own spot and landing as he chooses. 

 In fact, you may ride a fair horse over a five-foot wall, 

 with considerably less tremor than, with most of us, is 

 involved in a venture against four of stiff timber — 

 especially if, in the latter case, a tolerably wide ditch 

 (away from you) be given in. One of the few 

 objections to stonewall jumping will be found in the 

 stiffness of back and neck, consequent on the first day 

 or two of essay. An old hunter accustomed to them 

 will get so near to a wall that he rises almost perpen- 

 dicularly, and — mutatis mutandis as to head and tail — 

 descends almost vertically on the other side. To 

 accommodate yourself to this form of calisthenics, 

 your body is at one moment lying along his neck, and 

 at the next it must be thrown back on to the crupper 

 — your spinal cord being called upon to perform the 

 hinge-action required. Let this performance be 

 executed fifty -four times in a single day (as an old 

 Oxonian assures us occurred to him when at college) 

 — and small wonder if a certain degree of torturing 

 stiffness is your lot on the next. Granting you no 

 longer possess Oxonian youth — and the faculty of 

 going some distance out of your way for the sake of 

 a jump — you must yet in a stonewall country often find 

 yourself an extraordinary number of times in the air. 



