280 THE HUNTING FIELD 



If an)- pretty }-oung lady were to propound to us the 

 following : — 



" Do you think it would assist me in catching; young Mr. 

 Redrag if I were to take to foxhunting? " 

 We should say : — 



" Be cautious : we have our doubts. It may catch him, 

 or it may scare him. Some men think mounting themselves 

 as much as they can manage, and would rather have a wife 

 staying at home looking after the house than tearing about 

 the country after the hounds. Besides, it is possible you 

 might beat him, and men don't like being beat by their wives 

 in the field, anv more than wives like being beat by their 

 husbands in the house. Again, we sa}', be cautious. But 

 here comes a case in point : our fair friend, Henrietta Cotton- 

 wool. Henrietta has been after that weary Sir Rasper 

 Smashgate, the whole of this blessed season, and now, as 

 spring is about to set in, with its us<.ial severity, she feels 

 herself constrained to take some decided step. " To be, or 

 not to be," is the point — Lady Smashgate or Henrietta 

 Cottonwool. Henrietta is a tine, large, full-grown, healthy- 

 looking girl, who, of course, says she thinks " all girls fools 

 who marry," and yet at the same time would do anything 

 to catch a husband herself. She uses the common figure of 

 speech, in fact, or, rather, the common figure of lie — a figure 

 so common, that if all men were married it might be abolished, 

 for it only does for the bachelors, and those must be of the 

 soft order, who believe it. 



A man is not a match for a woman till he's married. 

 That is an aphorism to which all Benedicts will assent. Our 

 friend Sir Rasper Smashgate is in a somewhat similar predica- 

 ment to the half-starved costermonger's horse, whose guardian 

 boy declared had plenty of corn only he " hadn't got no time 

 to eat it." Smashgate is matrimonially inclined, at all events 

 he has no objection to matrimony, only hunting leaves him 



