^Nimrod ' 



been taught to drive properly and those who have not is 

 easily detected by the initiated. Here are two tests : When 

 you are meeting any one who is driving one or more horses, 

 look at his hands ; if he knows how to drive, you will only 

 see their backs. The other test is to mark what he does 

 with his whip when he puts it down as his carriage is in 

 motion. If he puts the butt end on the footboard and 

 leans the other on the back of the seat, he is a coachman ; 

 if he sticks it into the socket when he has no further use 

 for it, he is a tailor. The man who rests it on the footboard 

 has probably learnt to do so from driving a coach, when to 

 put the whip into the socket is to invite disaster from the 

 trees. The whip should never be put in the socket except 

 when the coach or carriage is standing still. But it is of no 

 avail to go into all this now, though we may now and again 

 read through * Nimrod's ' chapter and try to wonder what 

 it was like to leave Shrewsbury on the top of a coach at 

 six o'clock in the morning and not get to London till nine 

 o'clock at night. 



THE CHACE 



' Listening how the hounds and horn 

 Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 

 From the side of some hoar hill 

 Thro' the high wood echoing shrill.' — Milton. 



In various old writers — * The Mayster of the Game' for 

 instance — we find lively pictures of the ancient English 

 chace, which in many respects, no doubt, was of a more 

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