THE HUNTSMAN 113 



can give his critics heaps of weight at riding is 

 pained by hearing himself called an old fogey, 

 and at hints being given him that he should retire 

 in favour of the first whipper-in, hints which, if 

 not given to his face, are sure to come round to 

 him. 



Apart from the fact that this is very bad form, 

 it is unjust. It tends to unsettle a good servant, 

 for the admirers of the whipper-in do not fail to 

 fool him to the top of his bent, and it causes 

 jealousy, and perhaps ill-feeling, where there is no 

 necessity. No man likes to be ousted from his 

 place when he feels himself competent to fulfil the 

 duties of it, and it may be said that no man would 

 have the ill-manners to go into his friend's house 

 and advocate the butler's retirement, and the filling 

 up of his place by the senior footman or the page- 

 boy. 



Two instances of the critics saying a huntsman 

 was getting slow and had given up riding, and of 

 their criticism receiving practical refutation as soon 

 as uttered, occur to my memory. On the first 

 occasion the huntsman had been persevering with 

 a bad scent and a twisting fox, and so raised the 

 spleen of the critics. But things took a turn, 

 hounds swam across a brook in flood — twenty feet 

 from bank to bank — which the huntsman took in 

 his stride, and, of course, stopped the field. On 

 the other occasion, hounds were running hard, the 

 fence was impregnable, and a locked chain was 

 round the gate — a high one. So the huntsman 

 jumped it, as a matter of course. " And silenced 

 the critics," you say. Well, scarcely. The man 

 who was born ten minutes ago and knows all about 

 it, is bad to silence. 



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