MODEEN BEAGLING 209 



double pack hunting four days a week. Since then there has been 

 no new departure, though several useful reforms and improvements 

 have been effected, and dilapidations made good. 



A new hound van, for example, replaced the now decrepit vehicle 

 which had done duty since " Mother " Hunt's time, and whose long 

 and honourable service did, as has been said, great credit to the 

 Shropshire carpenter in whose shop she was built. Various necessary 

 repairs and improvements have been effected in the fabric of the 

 Kennels, and what is more, the freehold of the site has been secured 

 to the Hunt. Also a field has been secured of great use in hound 

 breeding. Also Eeaveley was discovered. And last, but by no means 

 least, some genius invented the safety bicycle, and the unwritten law 

 against " bogwheels " has succumbed to force majeure. More 

 recently still motor bikes and " Pitt taxis " have appeared on 

 the scene. 



I hope, in parenthesis, that some of the older members of this era 

 will not mind being included in the rising generation. All, I take it, 

 are young who are not yet old enough to have sons up and supporting 

 T.F.B. But no sooner do we cease to be young than we begin to 

 wish to be thought so. So if there are any old enough not to be 

 young and young enough not to wish to be thought young, they wiU 

 soon outgrow that transient condition and forgive me ! 



To begin with bogwheels. I remember coming up for the May 

 term of 1890 as a bachelor, and that these " safeties," as they were then 

 called in contradistinction to the high bicycles which still held their 

 own sufficiently to be called " ordinaries," began to pervade the 

 streets, though 'Varsity men so far did not touch them. But one day 

 A. M. Allgood said to T. A. E. Sanderson, who repeated the matter to 

 me in after years, " Blow the bloods " (or words to that effect), " let 

 us learn to ride bicycles." Which they did, defying convention, I 

 believe, even to the extent of using them to go and look on at the 

 Polo ! The next milestone on the downgrade was when my wife and 

 I were staying with a distinguished professor of mathematics in the 

 Lensfield Eoad, and their niece, who was dining there, begged our 

 moral support to overcome her uncle's and aunt's strong prejudice 

 against a lady owning and riding a bicycle. Then Mr, Dunlop 



p 



