TRIFLES 333 



wind — a black wing flapping on either side of his white 

 back and legs — was comical in the extreme, even if it was 

 scarcely less decent than, say, that of a dowager at a 

 drawing-room. 



If you want proof of how labyrinthine was the sport 

 of the day, I can give it you in a trifling experience of my 

 own. Hounds were running at the time steadily and 

 consistently, if not exactly fiercely, beside a boundary 

 hedgerow. It occurred to me to jump the fence one 

 way, just at the moment that a noble lord was impelled 

 to cross it towards the other. The fence being of Irish 

 fashion, a ditch on either side, and both of us going 

 slowly, we met in the middle— and there, with our horses 

 nose to nose, proceeded amicably to argue out the point, 

 as to which was the more desirable direction. Noblesse 

 oblige. The gentle seigneur gave in to me, turned his 

 horse round, enforced his opinion by jumping the fence 

 lower down, and we arrived at length, merrily and simul- 

 taneously, at the end of the barrier in dispute. 



On Wednesday, March 14, with the Pytchley at West 

 H addon, it seemed as if the Melton contingent had been 

 forewarned against bringing with them on the day any of 

 those mane-shorn animals, recently so much affected in 

 the sister shire. Picture to yourself the gratification of 

 being called upon to climb and reclimb the Hemplow 

 Hills upon a hog-maned horse — this, too, in March, when 

 his waist is like a woman's — and you, maybe, have ever 

 made it one of your fads to ride wdth your girths giving 

 fullest scope to the play of heart and lungs ! It seems to 

 me — apart from the fact that a hog-maned horse carries 

 ever a sly, shamefaced look, as if he were afraid to meet 

 his fellow-creatures — that in depriving him of his mane 

 you deprive yourself of what wath most mortals is equiva- 

 lent to a second right hand. Among the various uses to 

 which I, for one, am accustomed to put my horse's half- 

 kept but sufficient mane are, firstly, as a side-rope by 

 which I haul myself into the saddle ; secondly, as a life- 

 line by which to maintain myself in position when once 

 there. By its means I recover myself when, on landing 

 over a fence, I find myself going faster than my horse ; 



