CHAPTER XXXIX 



ON BEING THROWN OUT 



I will sing you a song of a fox-hunting bout, 

 They shall tell their own tale who to-day were thrown out ; 

 For the fastest as well as the slowest of men, 

 Snobs and top-sawyers, alike now and then, 

 We are all of us tailors in turn. 



How trifling a cause will oft lose us a run ! 

 From the find to the finish how few see the fun ! 

 A mischance it is called when we come to a halt ; 

 I ne'er heard of one who confessed it a fault, 



Yet we're all of us tailors in turn. 



Egerton Warburton. 



There is nothing more aggravating than to go out 

 hunting and miss a good run, either by one's own 

 fault or by one of those fortuitous circumstances 

 which are continually happening in the hunting 

 field. Yet never a day passes but what some one 

 is " out of it," when hounds run hard, or even, for 

 the matter of that, when they don't ; and the very 

 best of us have frequently to own that we were not 

 just where we should have been in the run, and 

 that sometimes we have been " thrown out " alto- 

 gether. It is astonishing how on these occasions 

 we can find excuses for our mischance, and how 

 seldom we attribute our discomfiture to the right- 

 ful cause, which nine times out of a dozen is 



