8o THE BEST OF THE FUN 



CHAPTER XIII 



A HOLIDAY WITH THE WARD 



Frozen out in England, how better seek relaxation and 

 change than in a ride across Meath or county DubHn ? A 

 contrast — sometimes a very thrilHng one — will the Saxon 

 find it, when emerging fresh and untaught from the crude 

 simplicity of the stake-and-bounds of his native pastures. 

 Why don't you try it more generally, ye greedy thrusters, 

 with youth on your side, with an insatiable appetite for 

 perilous leaps, and above all with a growing craving ever 

 for a new sensation ? You will get it — this last named — 

 I promise you, when first you find yourselves poised on a 

 narrow back — a gulf, ten feet deep, and as many feet wide, 

 holding out its arms to you, while your horse gathers 

 himself on the crumbling ridge for a second, supreme 

 spring — and for a landing only a newly-stoned road wide 

 and far beneath you. 



If you don't select a frost, take the autumn ; and 

 school your nerves then, for the coming fray in the over- 

 crowded arena of the Shires. I believe you are all welcome 

 in this sport-loving land, to farmers and hunting-men 

 alike (at least this is the impression that they undeniably 

 convey to the grateful, casual stranger). You see, you 

 can't level an Irish fence to the ground — even if a hundred 

 or two ride over it. You can't break down a bank in the 

 blithe, well-pleased fashion in which you shiver a post 

 and rails or scatter an oxer ; while as for riding over wheat 

 or cutting up a piece of seeds, you must be wilfully and 

 ingeniously wicked if you can either achieve these or 

 succeed in leaving open a gate or liberating the stock. 



Of the many points that I find to astonish and impress 

 me during my novitiate in Irish hunting-fields is this one 

 — viz. that, notwithstanding the unaltered and unimproved 

 state of each fence after the passage of the leaders, the 

 whole main body of the field always contentedly follow on, 

 just as they do with us, where all the terrors and most 

 of the dangers of a fence are quickly knocked to pieces by 



