CHAPTER XXIV 



A GOOD RUN 



There is nothing more amusing than to notice 

 men's opinions respecting the sport they are having, 

 and sometimes when one has listened to their de- 

 scriptions of the runs they have seen, one is tempted 

 to ask the question whether there ever was a really 

 good run. Of course, runs differ in degree, but 

 I think it falls to the lot of few men to see many 

 brilliant runs in their lifetime, even should they be 

 men who hunt a great deal. For be it understood 

 that to be out when a good run takes place and to 

 miss it, as will happen on occasion to the best of 

 men, is even more aggravating than not to have 

 been out at all. 



Good runs are of two kinds. There is the 

 good run of fiction, and there is the more prosaic 

 good run which goes to the making of hunting 

 history. It must not be thought that I would 

 include in the good runs of fiction those spirit- 

 stirring passages in Whyte-Melville's or in Surtees' 

 books which afford so much pleasure to hunting 

 readers. The run in Digby Grand, Walter 

 Brooke's fall at the eighteen-foot drain, that stern 

 ride over Exmoor after the wild red deer, all these 

 stand out in bold relief as choice bits to which the 

 sportsman recurs with pleasure, and alongside them 



