224 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



injury to property. Mr. Austin Wadsworth, M.F.H., of 

 the Genesee Valley Hunt, once told me that during the 

 number of years he had been Master there he had paid out 

 only a small sum, all told, for damages. No; hunting men 

 are permitted to ride over farms because the farmer likes 

 to see them enjoy themselves ; even if he cannot afford to 

 keep a hunter or take a half-holiday himself, he bids them 

 welcome. 



Few city men appreciate this welcome. Reverse the 

 case and it would be another story. Suppose the owner of 

 a furniture-shop in town had forty or fifty roughshod 

 farmers periodically rushing through his shop, kicking over 

 chairs, breaking mirrors, leaving the door of the varnish- 

 room open till a cloud of dust made the new work to do 

 all over again how much comforted would he be to 

 have them say they might buy a rocking-chair or two, 

 and tell him he ought to welcome such good patrons and 

 not be grumbling? The debt the hunters owe the farmers 

 whose land they ride over is one of gratitude, and can 

 never be reduced to figures. They pay a thousand dollars 

 apiece for their hunters, a hundred for their hunting-suits, 

 three cents a mile to the railway company to journey to 

 the valley, and dollars or pennies to hotels, servants, or 

 grooms. Every bill they owe, little or big, they pay to the 

 last penny, or ought to ; but none pays the farmer, directly 

 or indirectly, for riding roughshod across his fields. It is 

 really too bad to spout that musty speech about the farmer's 

 pecuniary advantage from the hunt. One should rather 

 speak out like a sportsman and own the debt ; for, although 

 he cannot square accounts, he can at least have a care. 



