44 SPORTS AND ANECDOTES. 



ever appeared in a red coat the servants of the 

 hunt as a matter of course excepted no gentleman, 

 except the hunting parson or some one who had 

 lost a near relative, ever dreamt of appearing in black. 

 There was no such absurdity known, for every one 

 prided himself on his red coat, feeling that it was the 

 only token which distinguished him from his grocer's 

 apprentice, his lawyer's clerk, or his tailor's goose. 



Go to a meet in these days, and where one saw a 

 hundred red-coats twenty years since, there will not 

 be twenty now. A sad change has come over the 

 spirit of my dream, but, so it is. Who could have set 

 such an absurd fashion, and why others should follow 

 such an absurd fashion, no one seems to be able to 

 say, except that everything must give way to fashion, 

 and that one fool makes many. 



What would the good old Earl, Sir Richard 

 Sutton, Burrows, Henley Greaves, all of whom I 

 have known as masters of the Cottesmore hounds, say, 

 if they could see the present generation of swells 

 riding in black coats instead of scarlet, and looking 

 like a field of undertakers in top-boots, instead 

 of looking like the pride of England, the country 

 gentleman and his sons, and those who are by rank 

 and birth entitled to the name of the aristocracy ? 



