THE HUNTSMAN 53 



Gentlemen never look well in caps. A cap and a frock coat 

 should always go together. A gentleman in a cutaway coat 

 and a cap looks as absurd as a courtier would in a round hat. 



Leather breeches are stupid things for field servants. If the 

 breeches are good, they are heavy, and require a deal of 

 cleaning to keep them in order, and nothing can be more 

 unsightly than thin, dingy, parchment-looking, ill-kept ones. 

 Hunting servants have plenty to do without cleaning leather 

 breeches. Lord Yarborough's men, we believe, wear them ; 

 but it is not every Master that has his lordship's purse. His 

 lordship's men are the only ones we ever saw really well 

 turned out in leathers. The Warwickshire men used to wear 

 them in Boxall's time, but they would have looked better in 

 cords. The Atherstone men, in Mr. Applewaite's time, were 

 as well turned out as any men of the day, in neat cords, all of 

 the same colour and pattern. 



Servants' dress should be stout, warm, and weather defying. 

 They have many a weary, trashing, cold ride, both of a morn- 

 ing and an evening, that the generality of hound followers 

 know nothing about. If the generality of men find the hounds 

 at the meet at half-past ten or eleven, they neither care to 

 know whence they came, nor whither they go. They look at 

 them, much as people look at a play ; at a certain hour they 

 expect to find the doors open, and " nosey " scraping his fiddle 

 in the orchestra, after which all is looked upon as a mere 

 matter of course ; they are but spectators, free to stay or go 

 as the humour seizes them. The Huntsmen and whips, 

 however, must stay till the close of the entertainment, some- 

 times longer, unless, indeed, the Huntsman is content to go 

 away, leaving lost hounds to " follow on," as a treasure of a 

 man we knew used to say. We spoke in the past tense, but 

 we know him still, only he carries a horn with letters on a 

 mule, instead of pretending to hunt hounds, and he seems 

 quite in his right place now. 



