A GOOD RUN 143 



may be placed the famous Cat and Custard Pot 

 day, and Michael Hardy's first day with the Gin 

 and Water Hounds, inimitable bits of description. 

 But by the good runs of fiction, I mean those 

 which appear in the pages of the gushing novelist, 

 who, by the way, is generally a woman. What 

 incredible distances hounds are made to run, and 

 in what a remarkably short space of time ; what 

 horrible obstacles are cleared at a bound (that 

 genial Irishman Charles Lever treats us to im- 

 possible places enough, but he is mild in comparison 

 with some I could name) ; rivers are jumped like 

 a four-foot drain. I often wonder how the youth 

 who has feasted on such literature feels when he 

 sees hounds for the first time and discovers what a 

 stern, uncompromising look there is about four feet 

 of stiff timber, and how neatly it can roll a good 

 horse over if he should take off a moment too 

 soon. 



The good runs of which I would speak, how- 

 ever, are much more prosaic affairs than those 

 which adorn the pages of Ouida and other writers 

 of that class. And here I would point out how 

 difficult it is to define a good run. Every one 

 knows or should know a good run when he has the 

 luck to see one, but a definition of one is quite 

 another matter. To begin with, it is essential that 

 there should be a point, yet I have seen many a very 

 good run in which it could scarcely be said that 

 a good point was made. The ideal run — forty 

 minutes on the grass without a check — presupposes 

 a six or seven mile point, and one of the best runs 

 it was ever my lot to see was a seven-mile point in 

 forty minutes over a very stiff" bit of country in 

 which grass was rather too scarce. 



