CHAPTER XLVIII 



BY INVITATION 



Still invites 

 All that pass by. 



Timon of Athens. 



"In days of old," where a country was not hunted 

 by some local magnate each yeoman and farmer 

 used to keep a hound, and at certain fixed times 

 these worthy souls would repair with their hounds 

 to some neighbour's house, not infrequently a 

 public - house, whence, after sundry libations to 

 Diana, the goddess of the chase, they would repair 

 the wily fox to slay. They were not a trencher- 

 fed pack ; the trencher-fed pack was a creation of 

 a later date, and was the result of the necessity of 

 continuous action and a continuous policy if fox- 

 hunting was to be adopted, as it ultimately was, as 

 the winter sport of the nation. In these pre- 

 historic days every man hunted his own hound, 

 several men carried a horn, and staunch indeed 

 must the hounds have been which killed a fox at 

 all with the babel of noise which was, in those 

 days, one of the concomitants of fox-hunting. It 

 is by no means impossible that these gatherings of 

 sportsmen, when Mr. Jones brought his Towler, 

 and Mr. Smith brought his Towler, and Mr. 

 Johnson brought still another Towler, and so on, 



