A Chat with Sam Hills 89 



days ; he has a keen sense of humour, with a merry- 

 twinkle of the eyes delightful to watch ; and he is no 

 mean raconteur. He is obliged to depend on his powers 

 of recollection. At one time he was accustomed to keep 

 a record of the doings of the hounds ; but, thanks to 

 removals and one cause or other, those precious archives 

 have been lost. Yet, orally, he is quite equal to the 

 occasion. One has only to tap him genially, and the 

 result is a spontaneous flow of sporting eloquence. He 

 seems to remember everything so clearly, vividly, without 

 an effort. Time spent with him is a sort of intellectual 

 sporting feast. 



He told the story of his life with an air of simple 

 modesty and restraint. " I was born," he said, " at the 

 kennels, Chelsham, so that if I had not taken kindly to 

 hunting it was not the fault of my parents. They 

 certainly did what they could for me in that direction, 

 and I was only too glad to second their humble efforts." 



He chuckled as he said that, confessing that, thanks to 

 his good start — and assuredly it is nothing against a 

 huntsman to be born at the kennels — he had enjoyed 

 a lot of fine sport in his time. " There may be more 

 money in business," he remarked, " but there is no fun 

 in it, and it does not leave us much to gloat over in our 

 old age." There is the cash, of course, to gloat over, but 

 that is a poor substitute for spiritual or sporting beatitude. 



At the age of fifteen Sam Hills began his practical 

 acquaintance with hunting as second horseman for his 

 father, Tom Hills, who then hunted the Old Surrey, and 



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