CHAPTER XVIII 



THE HUNTSMAN 



A view of his coat is our beacon, the sound of his horn is 



our call, 

 But his cheer to the hounds when he's near us — ah ! that 



is the sweetest of all. 



The Poetry of Sport (Great Guns). 



It has been said that a huntsman is always in the 

 estimation of his field either a heaven-born genius 

 or a fool. As a matter of fact, in the majority of 

 cases he is neither. He is merely a man possessed 

 of ordinary intelligence and keen powers of observa- 

 tion, who has received a good training in his pro- 

 fession, and who is capable of fulfilling the onerous 

 duties which attach to it. There are huntsmen 

 to whom the word "genius" might be fitly applied ; 

 there are also huntsmen who may justly be termed 

 incapable, but the numbers which fill either rank 

 are few indeed. Geniuses in any rank of life 

 are necessarily few, whilst incapable men natur- 

 ally drift out of a profession for which they are 

 unfitted. 



Even if a huntsman is the keenest of the keen 

 as a sportsman — and this is by no means always the 

 case, for there are respectable and capable hunt 

 servants to whom the word "sportsman" is scarcely 

 applicable — a huntsman's lot is by no means a bed 



