RIDING RECOLLECTIONS 



countries miracles of patience, no less than their 

 masters, not a nose would be nailed on the 

 kennel-door, after cub-hunting was over, from 

 one end of the shires to the other. 



Nothing surprises me so much as to see a pack 

 of hounds, like the Belvoir or the Quorn, come 

 up through a crowd of horses and stick to the line 

 of their fox, or fling gallantly forward to recover 

 it, without a thought of personal danger or the 

 slightest misgiving that not one man in ten is 

 master of the two pair of hoofs beneath him, 

 carrying death in every shoe. Were they not 

 bred for the make-and-shape that gives them 

 speed no less than for fineness of nose, but 

 especially for that dash which, like all victorious 

 qualities, leaves something to chance, they could 

 never get a field from the covert. It does happen, 

 however, that, now and again, a favourable stroke 

 of fortune puts a couple of furlongs between the 

 hounds and their pursuers. A hundred-acre field 

 of well saturated grass lies before them, down go 

 their noses, out go their sterns, and away they 

 scour, at a pace which makes a precious example 

 of young Rapid on a first-class steeplechase horse 

 with the wrong bridle in his mouth. 



But how differently is the same sport being 

 carried out in his father's country, perhaps by the 

 old gentleman's own pack, with which the young 

 one considers it slow to hunt. 



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