THE MASTER AT COTTONWOOL'S 21 



shooter was to make himself as unhappy about a bad day's 

 sport as some foxhunters do, what a booby we should think 

 him. " Better luck next time," is a fine consoling axiom, 

 cheering alike to the foxhunter, the gunner, and the fisherman. 

 Foxhunting is but a species of game, and whether a fox is 

 killed, or a fox is lost, or a fox is mobbed, or a fox is earthed, 

 makes no difference in the balance at the banker's — that 

 converging point to which so many anxious earthly hopes 

 turn. 



Gentlemen, when they begin to do a thing, are very apt to 

 do too much. They think if they take the Mastership of 

 hounds that they must slave and toil like servants. Then we 

 have a lot of babblement about " science," " condition," 

 "generative economy," " ^-Ethiop's mineral," and we don't 

 know what. Can science make a scent ? " Kennel manage- 

 ment," and all that sort of thing, is very necessary ; but 

 experience proves that a man may be a first-rate sportsman 

 without troubling himself about minutiae. Mr. Musters, if we 

 mistake not, was no great kennelman, and we should like to 

 have a look at any one with the boldness to deny his prowess 

 in the field. The best gentleman huntsman of the present day 

 never feeds his hounds. We have even known paid huntsmen 

 who never saw theirs except in the hunting field. 



The well-bred hound — the well-bred sporting dog of any 

 sort — will always leave the man who feeds it for the man who 

 shows it sport. 



All economists, political ones and all, agree in the inex- 

 pediency of keeping a dog and barking one's-self ; neither is 

 it of any use a Master keeping servants and doing their work. 

 The more trouble a man takes the more anxious he gets, and 

 the more he expects ; hence a great deal of that nervous 

 irritability in the hunting field which is almost its only bane. 

 Take it easy! Take it easy! "Better luck next time," 

 say we. 



