16 THE QUORN HUNT 



usual. A detailed description of the event is unnecessary, 

 but the affair gave rise, on the following Sunday, to what 

 are known as "pulpit utterances," the steeplechase being 

 denounced in more than one place of worship in the 

 town. The vicar took for his text, " Have no fellowship 

 with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove 

 them," and at the conclusion of his discourse he reminded 

 his hearers that the Melton of 1890 was not the Melton 

 of 1837, and that the town, while welcoming its visitors, 

 did not want the scenes which had been common fifty- 

 three years previously to be re-enacted. Enough, how- 

 ever, of the midnight steeplechase, which, after all, was 

 not hunting. 



Pour passer le temps on Sunday afternoons it had no 

 doubt been the custom for some time for men to look 

 over their friends' studs, but in the forties, if not 

 before, "doing stables" on Sunday afternoon appears 

 to have attained the dignity of a recognised function. 

 Stables were made to look as trim as complicated plait- 

 ing and pipe-claying could cause them to look, and 

 horses, like so many men, had Sunday coats, that is to 

 say, they had special suits to be worn during visiting 

 hours while critics, skilled and unskilled, were passing 

 remarks upon the merits of the horses in the different 

 studs. The wealthy Mr. Lyne Stephens clothed his 

 horses (on Sunday) in green sheets magnificently 

 embroidered with gold ; but after a while this sort of 

 thing struck most of the Meltonians as exceedingly 

 absurd, and so the Sunday coat was given up almost 

 before it was half worn out. As mentioned elsewhere, 

 the stables of Mr. Lyne Stephens, like those of many 

 other Meltonians, were fitted up in the very best style, 

 though perhaps no Meltonian ever reached the standard 

 attained by an eccentric Hertfordshire sportsman, who 

 carried stable fittings up to the point of absurdity. The 

 stall partitions were made of mahogany, and an elegant 



