RIDING RECOLLECTIONS 



as the hounds spread, and stoop and dash forward 

 with a whimper that makes the sweetest of music 

 in your ears. Perhaps, as they swarm across the 

 very lane in which you are standing, discretion 

 may calmly open the gate for valour, who curses 

 him in his heart, wondering what business he has 

 to be there at all. 



There is jealousy even in the hunting-field, 

 though we prefer to call it keenness, emulation, a 

 fancy for riding our own line, and I fear that with 

 most of us, in spite of the kindly sympathies and 

 joyous expansion of the chase, " ego et prceterea 

 nihiV is the unit about which our aspirations 

 chiefly revolve. 



"What is the use.'*" I once heard a plaintive 

 voice lamenting behind a blackthorn, while the 

 hounds were baying over a drain at the finish of 

 a clipping thirty minutes on the grass. " I've 

 spoilt my hat, I've torn my coat, I've lamed my 

 horse, I've had two falls, I went first, I'll take my 

 oath, from end to end, and there's that d — d 

 fellow on the coffee-coloured pony gets here 

 before me after all ! " 



There are times, no doubt, when valour must 

 needs yield the palm to discretion. 



Let us see how this last respectable quality 

 serves us at the other and nobler extremity of the 

 hunt, for it is there, after all, that our ambition 

 points, and our wishes chiefly tend. 



124 



