92 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



Ward will ever have for their chief illustrations flying 

 steeds with empty saddles and dangling reins, and narrow- 

 backs upon which horse and rider are slowly separating. 



I can understand nothing more despairing than the 

 sense of being deserted in a wild, perhaps wholly un- 

 familiar, country by the beast that constitutes your con- 

 veyance for the day, and to whom alone you look for 

 assistance over the dozen vague miles separating you 

 from your hearth. Having once got rid of you, his habit 

 appears to be to see as much of the sport as he can, until 

 he finds himself in a road — when he at once takes first 

 place, outstrips even the deer, and goes off into space. 



Were it to be my fortune to hunt regularly with The 

 Wards, I should seriously contemplate having all my 

 horses branded, as on the Western prairie ; or even, as 

 that might not explain itself sufficiently to the local mind, 

 have a fully addressed luggage label affixed daily to my 

 hunter's mane. 



Indeed, now that I am safely back in my native Shire, 

 I may conscientiously affirm that, whatever doubt and 

 alarm may have attended the necessity of negotiating 

 the strange impediments of county Meath or county 

 Dublin, the two points on which I dwelt ever in honest 

 fear, were (i) lest my career should be stopped, and my 

 run lost, by one of these big ditches swallowing me up, 

 horse and all ; and (2) lest the same result should happen 

 by my horse getting away and leaving me afoot. 



For all I know, it may be in acknowledgment of this 

 last paramount danger^ — so frequently evidenced in fact — 

 that the members of the Ward Union — unquestionably 

 the most thorough and sporting Hunt that clubs together 

 with a view to chasing the stag — do not affect a livery, nor 

 even as a rule garb themselves otherwise than in vest- 

 ments suitable almost equally for running as for riding. 

 The result is wanting in picturesqueness ; though, so far 

 from intending ungraciously to cavil at the general absence 

 of scarlet or of green, the casual visitor may add this also 

 to his debt of gratitude, that he does not find his coat of 

 travel or of cub-hunting out of place amid a strictly uni- 

 formed crowd. 



