THE FOOT DEAG 



27 



already married and beginning to live happily ever after when a 

 Tertium Quid of some sort intervenes and makes everybody miserable 

 including himself. But often you are so bored with the preliminaries 

 that you never get into the tale at all. Sometimes, however, you 

 start a book in the middle, get gripped, go on to the end, and then 

 search erratically in the earlier chapters to find how they arrived at 

 the situation with which you started. Some story-tellers know 

 this trick and formally begin in the thick of the fray and then 

 liark back. Homer knew it, for example, and so begins the Odyssey 

 with his hero's entanglement with 



and then sets him a -telling that fascinatress in the first person 

 singular how he got there. In an actual history such as ours it is 

 more natural and even necessary to begin in the present, which is the 

 middle, not the end, describe the going concern, and then piece 

 together its history from the frag- 

 mentary memories, letters, and other 

 scraps of information which con- 

 stitute the original documents. 



The Trinity Foot Beagles are a 

 subscription pack managed by under- 

 graduates and hunting such of the 

 country round Cambridge as is suit- 

 able, on four days of the week and a 

 bye, in the October and Lent Terms. 

 There is no formal constitution, no 

 committee, nor any meeting of the 

 subscribers, nor a balance-sheet, nor 

 is there any positive connection with 

 Trinity College. Any member of the 

 University of any college whatsoever 

 can find out where hounds meet and 

 put in a first appearance. If he is 

 pleased with the sport he can continue to turn up, provided he pays 

 a subscription. He then receives a card of the meets, to which he 



V 



A First Appearance. 



