THE DRAG. 331 



have somewhere read of a master of liounds M-hose sport was 

 so bad that he announced his intention of resigning the post at 

 the end of the season. To his astonishment, a succession of 

 particularly good runs set in, and he had no more complaint to 

 make, and it was a long time ere he found out that some clever 

 members of his field, not wishing him to resign, had contrived 

 for his benefit a lot of drags from favourite coverts. I need not 

 add he was not a Musters or an Anstruther Thomson, or such a 

 trick would never have been attempted, and, if it had, would 

 undoubtedly have failed. In my younger days I have seen 

 some very good fun with the drag, and remember once a meet 

 of harriers where one was started with the consent of the 

 master, though the field knew nothing about it, in which they had 

 such a rattler that several exclaimed, "We must have changed 

 on to a fox ;" and were only reassured by seeing a hare devoured 

 by the hounds at the finish, for the thing was really well done. 

 Provided land could be found to ride over — and there are 

 very few countries where it could not, I fancy — it would be a 

 capital thing to establish packs of drag-hounds, and I am sure 

 many masters of fox-hounds would heartily encourage the idea, if 

 it tended to draw away from them a host of people who neither 

 know nor care anything about hounds, but simply come out to 

 ride against each other. To hear the conversation of a lot of 

 the Young England school after eight or nine o'clock, you would 

 imagine that a man's whole business in life from November to 

 March was to jump. You may sit down where they congregate 



and hear how A jumped this, B shirked that, C 



fell here, and I got safe over there, but never a word escapes 

 their lips relative to what the liounds have done ; and I very 

 much doubt if one in ten of this school know whether they 

 ran up wind or down, whether they had a dog or bitch pack 

 out, or, for the matter of that, whether they were ever 

 really on a line or not, and I am sure, so that they could 

 only go fast enough, they cared less. This is totally ignored by 

 a large number that come out, and if they could be persuaded to 



