LADY lOXHUXTERS 277 



uncommon performers among women, performers that would 

 put nine-tenths of the men to the bkish. We are puzzled 

 whether to give the palm to the single or to the married 

 women in this respect ; but, as the single are most interesting, 

 perhaps the preference will be yielded to them. Like many 

 things in this world it makes all the difference who the party 

 is that hunts. If a pretty woman hunts we are all glad to see 

 her ; if an ugly one comes we wonder what " brings her out." 

 Certainly dishevelled hair, ruddy and perspiring face, and 

 muddy habits are more likely to be forgiven in the bloom of 

 youth than in what ought to be the orderh' sobriety of maturer 

 years. We had dotted down a lot of names of first-rate female 

 performers across country, but in looking it over we find it 

 contains such a curious medley, that we think it better to 

 suppress it altogether than risk the chance of offending by 

 publishing an unpalatable assortment. 



Never having been a woman, we cannot understand how it 

 is they manage to keep their seats. We see what are called 

 " wash ball " seated men rolling about constantly, and yet 

 women, to whom the term as well as the form is much more 

 applicable and becoming, manage to keep on. Keeping their 

 seats on the road, and keeping them in the field are very 

 different things, about as different as riding horses on the road 

 and riding them with hounds. " Still, when there's a will 

 there's a wa\','" and pretty dears who would scream at the sight 

 of a frog or a mouse, will face a bullfinch from which many 

 men would turn away — indeed that is one of the palpable 

 inconveniences of ladies hunting, for it is almost a point of 

 honour for men to go over what ladies have taken. If it were 

 not their ignorance when horses have done enough, and their 

 great desire for pace, we would rather be a woman's horse than 

 a man's. Women have much finer and more delicate hands 

 than men, and they never fight or bully their horses as men do 

 — neither do they ever pull them into their leaps— by which 



