26o THE BEST OF THE FUN 



foot, as indeed here) awaited at Cloutsham the breaking- 

 covert of the first stag in August. And I don't think that 

 even on Exmoor it was much hotter, or much more Hke 

 fox-hunting ! To make the parallel fit still more closely, 

 here, too, was a deer bounding across a glade, with two 

 tufters at his heels." (Mark you, reader, this is all in 

 mverted commas. Am I not forewarned by the sad 

 plight of my most esteemed coUaborateur ? Rusticus, 

 dear Rusticus, why did you ? Indeed, indeed I hardly 

 dare laugh, though my very ribs are thumping against my 

 waistcoat for room. Oh, surely you have read, many and 

 many a time, of Dotheboy's Hall and the Master's fate ? 

 Who are the boys ? Therein you'll find the " holy text 

 shall teach the rustic moralist to die.") 



Having extracted thus far from the stolen diary, I 

 need add little or nothing, beyond thanking my kind 

 acquaintance for the loan thus taken, and the difficulty 

 from which he thus extricated me. He adds, I find, that 

 he went back to Essex, having seen at least six foxes 

 running before hounds, and, in order to see this, having 

 never moved a mile ! He thinks that the Grass Countries 

 are a fraud, and that it is much cheaper and quite as 

 satisfactory to hunt in Essex, the Puckeridge country, with 

 its home rule and its quaint perils alone excepted. I will 

 note down for him what he cannot, a few names of those 

 who adorned this curiously listless day : Lord Penrhyn, 

 Mr, and Mrs. E. Douglas-Pennant, Mr. Robarts, Captain 

 and Mrs. Oliver, Major and Mrs. Gould, Mr. and Mrs. 

 Kingscote, Mrs. Atkinson, Mr. and Mrs. Ryan, Miss Milne, 

 Lord Euston, Lord Alfred FitzRoy, Mr. Selby Lowndes, 

 Major Ellis, Messrs. H. Gosling, Wilder, Whitton, Bentley, 

 &c. &c. 



P. S. — I think you will agree with me as to who are 

 the most regrettable sufferers of all from this premature 

 collapse of hunting in many parts of England, viz. the 

 schoolboys. One's heart fairly bleeds for them, when one 

 recalls the concentrated bliss that a single day's hunting 

 used to represent at that age, and when one bears in 

 mind that, besides being robbed at Eastertide, they fared 

 little better during their Christmas holidays, frost and 



