HUNT SERVANTS. 147 



I ought to say a word on the subject of horses as regards 

 whippers-in. I have often in my life heard a M.F.H. say 

 of a brute that can neither jump nor gallop, 'Oh, he will 

 do to carry a whipper-in.' Now this is a very great mis- 

 take. Leave your whipper-in at home sooner than mount him 

 badly. To be of any use he should be able to get to hounds 

 and to stop hounds if wanted. If you are too stingy or too 

 badly off to buy good horses for him, buy none, and begin your 

 economy at the right place. It is just as expensive to feed, and 

 keep helpers to attend to, a bad horse as a good one, and your 

 whipper-in badly mounted is useless. I would impress on 

 whippers-in that horses are not steam engines that will go as 

 long as you choose to keep the steam on, and that even if they 

 were they have no tender with water and coal to feed them with. 

 I know some who never take care of their horses, always tire 

 them, gallop in the deepest and worst, instead of the firmest and 

 best, ground, and ride them over the biggest place instead of the 

 easiest in the fence, when there is no necessity for it. To these 

 men I would say, ' Nurse your horse ; the run may be severe, the 

 day may be long, and to get to the end of either you must ride 

 with care and judgment.' A good horse deserves to be well 

 treated, and a whipper-in who ill-uses and knocks his horses 

 about deserves the fate with which I always threatened Dick 

 Christian, who was a butcher on a horse namely, that I would 

 buy blind fly horses in Bath or Cheltenham and give him 

 nothing else to ride. 



A huntsman, whether he be a gentleman or a professional, 

 should impress on his whippers-in certain things that they 

 should or should not do. This is better done by quietly talking 

 to them in the kennels or elsewhere than by blowing them up 

 or swearing at them in the hunting field, though it is at times 

 necessary to speak out there. I have observed that nine out of 

 ten interfere with hounds when they ought not to do so. For 

 instance : having got a long way behind his fox, and the hounds 

 being at check, the huntsman is making his cast. Some one, 

 or perhaps even two or three, couple of hounds, with finer 



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