COURSING 



This may be called roughing it — slovenly — coarse — rude — 

 artless — unscientific. But we say no — ^it is your only 

 coursing. . . . 



' But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in 

 even daundering about the home farm seeking for a hare ? 

 It is quite an art or science. You must consult not only the 

 wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before — and of 

 every day and night back to last Sunday, when probably you 

 were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares 

 shift the sites of their country seats every season. This 

 month they love the fallow field — that, the stubble ; this, you 

 will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown 

 on the bare stony upland lea — that, you must have a hawk's 

 eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in 

 their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken ; 

 they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or 

 wind — that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover ; now you 

 may depend on finding Madam at home in the sulks within the 

 very heart of a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, 

 while the squire cocks his fud at you from the top of a knowe 

 open to blasts from all the airts ; in short, he who knows at all 

 times where to find a hare, even if he knew no one single thing 

 else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant 

 man — is probably a better informed man in the long run than 

 the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, 

 the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the lie 

 on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an 

 old courser (him of the Sporting Annals included) who was not 

 a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we ? — 

 at the Trysting-Hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger- 

 them-Out. 



' Line is formed, and with measured steps we march to- 

 wards the hills — for we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, 

 bright, and blooming as the rose — fleet of foot almost as the 

 very antelope — Oh ! now, alas ! dim and withered as a stalk 

 from which winter has swept all the blossoms — slow as the 



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