CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. 

 England — as you love us and yourself — cultivate 

 hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving 

 up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce 

 being handed round on a large trencher. But there 

 is no such thing as melancholy meat — neither fish, 

 flesh, nor fowl — provided only there be enough of it. 

 Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. 

 But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight 

 in even daunering about the home farm seeking for a 

 hare? It is quite an art or science. You must consult 

 not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the 

 night before — and of every day and night back to 

 last Sunday, when probably you were prevented by 

 the rain from going to church. Then hares shift the 

 sites of their country seats every season. This month 

 they love the fallow field — that, the stubble; this, you 

 will see them, almost without looking for them, big 

 and brown on the bare stony upland lea — that, you 

 must have a hawk"'s eye in your head to discern, dis- 

 cover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embow- 

 ered below the bun weed or the bracken; they choose 

 to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or 

 wind — that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; 

 now you may depend on finding madam at home in 

 the sulks within the very heart of a bramble-bush or 

 dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his 

 [34] 



