THE WHIPPER-IN 63 



ribbons style of the omnium gatherum, refuse, tear away, tear- 

 'em-up town pack. 



Before railway advertisements increased and multiplied our 

 advertising sheets, newspaper editors used generally, in the 

 dulnessofautumnal times, to enlarge a leopard or tiger from 

 the caravan of some travelling showman, which, while it 

 afforded a fine crop of paragraphs, as long as it was at liberty, 

 produced a good stout contradiction at the end, and really we 

 don't think we are going much beyond the mark in saying 

 that a bona fide tiger or leopard would not be much more 

 dangerous than some of these enlarged canine bedlams, called 

 scratch packs. 



Beckford relates how a kennelled pack once ate up their 

 Huntsman-nothing but the unfortunate man's buttons being 

 found to account for him-and we have seen animals scouring 

 the country that seemed equal to anything-anything, from a 

 "helephant down to a hearwig," as the dancing-master Hunts- 

 man, to the short-lived Fulham harriers, said of his. A man 

 that has never tried his hand with fox-hounds has not the 

 slightest conception of the undertaking. He sees forty or fifty 

 couple of great strapping, high-conditioned animals, all as 

 docile and obedient as lap-dogs-apparently rather inert than 

 otherwise-and he very likely fancies that listlessness is their 

 characteristic, that they are a sort of canine calves, and that 

 anybody can manage them. Little as hounds are attended to 

 m the field, it must have struck even the most casual observer 

 what totally different animals they are in kennel and out. In 

 kennel they are easy, indolent, devil-may-care sort of creatures, 

 checked by a word, almost a look, but when their mettle is 

 roused by the scent, what dash, what energy, what life, what 

 determmation is called forth. The Huntsman's horn and the 

 Whippers-in rate are equally disregarded, and "getting at 

 them " is the only chance of stopping them. How small a 

 man feels in a kennel with some fifty or sixty couple, looking 



