COSTUME AND E9UIPMENT. 35 



The average schoolboy can hardly get more than five 

 or six weeks of hunting in any one season, and those 

 who have only one pony will be lucky if they get eight 

 or ten days during the holidays, and that can only be 

 achieved if there, is, no stoppage from frost or snow. 

 Therefore, the boy who hunts regularly every Christmas 

 holidays will at. the end of his schooldays have had a 

 total of hunting which would hardly equal one regular 

 season, and his hunting will have been spread over 

 several years. Each winter he will be to some extent 

 a beginner again, and, whereas he might have become 

 proficient as a horseman, and possessed of much hunting 

 knowledge, could he have managed three or four months 

 of hunting straight on end, he has had in reality only 

 a few short spells of sport, with long intervals of no 

 hunting between. Let him therefore desist from wearing 

 spurs until his schooldays are over and he is a free agent 

 in all matters connected with hunting. 



To trust a little girl with spurs is to court accident, 

 for the average pony is unaccustomed to be ridden 

 in spurs, and a touch of the steel will often make him 

 bolt, and when a pony bolts with a girl the chances 

 of an accident are greater than they are with a boy. 

 Few girls have the wrist power which boys of the same 

 age possess, and a girl's habit may be caught in a fence 

 or on a half-open gate. Indeed, I have mentioned a 

 half-opened gate because I saw a girl come to grief 

 many years ago in this identical fashion. She was 

 quite a young girl, and was riding a tall horse, and she 

 wore a spur. Hounds found, and a big field began to 

 gallop in a cramped country, where there was a high 

 park wall. Hounds got through or over, and the field 

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