22 PRACTICAL HINTS FOR HUNTING NOVICES. 



satisfy his ambition until he is well on in years. Instances 

 of men who began at thirty, forty, and even fifty years 

 of age are not unknown, and it should be added that 

 when men of what may be called mature age take to 

 the sport they very rarely commit themselves. Their 

 general knowledge of life has taught them so many 

 lessons that they have postponed their appearance in 

 the field until they knew they were what the actors 

 call letter-perfect. Though unable to hunt as young 

 men, they — having all along had an intuitive desire to 

 hunt — have followed the sport in the papers, have 

 kept themselves abreast of what has been going on 

 in the hunting world, and have most likely fed them- 

 selves up on the works of Whyte Melville and Surtees. 

 They may have even dipped into Beckford, Vyner, 

 Capt. Cook, or Delme Radcliffe, the classic authorities 

 of the sport, but anyhow they have, as a rule, made 

 themselves very fully acquainted with all the ins and 

 outs of hunting, and most certainly they have become 

 passable horsemen before they took the field. To this 

 class of man little need be said, but there are still a few 

 middle-aged novices who have or have not a lot to learn, 

 and I can think of two specimens of the class, one of 

 whom was a good and the other probably the most 

 aggravating novice ever known. The good novice 

 had hunted a little — a very little — as a boy on a pony, 

 but from his childhood until he was about fifty he had 

 never seen a hound, and had ridden very little. Indeed, 

 he had spent some five -and -twenty years in India, 

 and then came home to live at the family place which 

 ho had inherited. He at once sent a subscription 

 to the hounds, and shortly afterwards appeared at the 



