MIGRATION IN THE FROST 



195 



Here, they told me, hunting had not been stopped 

 since Christmas Day, the very date on which we went into 

 winter quarters, and since which the most we had known 

 of fox-hunting was contained in the querulous plaints of the 

 frozen-out muster in the club smoking-room. Monotony 

 is a word wholly insufficient to express the existence of a 

 hunting man who has no bones to waste upon skating, and 

 who, after a first week in which to see a play or two, eat a 

 dinner or two, and perhaps try on a coat, finds himself 

 still penned up in London, only because the country, and 

 the contemplation of an idle stud, is more aggravating still. 



-mmm 



An idle stud 



In Ireland a sense of warmth and sport seemed to 

 pervade the land. Cattle and sheep were browsing at 

 large in the green fields, amid richest grass. A happy lot, 

 methought, is that of the Irish farmer ! He is seldom 

 called upon to fodder his stock ; and his beasts are never 

 pinched with cold and short commons. His tenure is 

 fixed by law, and his payment of rent by his own inclina- 

 tion. He has no gates to keep in repair, and, as for his 

 fences, it takes a mighty hard knock to make a gap in a 

 bank. Instead of five horses that may be seen dragging a 

 plough through the stiff clays of Mid England, a light 

 brood mare and a donkey will do all the ploughing and 

 harrowing that lie needs. Take my advice, farmer friends 

 of Northamptonshire. Go west, but go no further than 

 Ireland. 



