HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS 



" Jem Pike has just come round, gentlemen, to say 

 that they will be able to hunt to-day, after all : and 

 as it's about starting time, and you've some distance 

 to go, I will, if you wish, gentlemen, order your 

 horses round." 



The announcement, as it came to us over our 

 breakfast at a hostelry which I will call the Lion, 

 in a market town which I will call Chippington 

 — a highly convenient hunting rendezvous in the 

 Midlands — was not a little welcome. Jem Pike 

 was the huntsman of the pack, and Jem Pike's 

 message was an intimation that the frost of last 

 night had not destroyed our sport for the day. 

 The morning broke in what Jem would call a 

 " plaguey ugly fashion : " from an artistic point of 

 view it had been divine : for hunting purposes it 

 had been execrable. A thin coating of ice on one's 

 bath indoors, a good stiff hoar frost out, crystallized 

 trees, and resonant roads — all this was seasonable, 

 very, and " pretty to look at, too." But it was " bad 

 for riding : " and we had not come to the Lion at 



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