140 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



despite of any and all difficulties which may have opposed 

 him, — the result of strongly-braced nerves and great 

 physical powers, — let us look at him in his saddle. Does 

 he not look like a workman 1 Observe how lightly he 

 sits ! No one would suppose him to be a twelve-stone man. 

 And what a firm hand he has on his horses ! How well he 

 puts them at their fences, and what chances he gives them 

 to extricate themselves from any scrape they may have 

 gotten into. He never hurries them then ; no man ever 

 saw Tom Smith ride fast at his fences, at least at large ones 

 (brooks excepted), let the pace be what it may ; and what a 

 treat it is to see him jump water ! His falls, to be sure, 

 have been innumerable ; but what very hard riding man 

 does not get falls ? Hundreds of Mr. Smith's falls may be 

 accounted for : he has measured his horses' pluck by his 

 own, and ridden at hundreds of non-feasible places, with 

 the chance of getting over them somehow. Bravo ! Mr. 

 Smith, you must be number one, for, by Heavens ! there 

 will never be such another Mr. Smith as long as the world 

 stands." — (Hunting lieminiscences, p. 294.) 



To go back to writers contemporary with the feats of 

 which they spoke, when criticism and censure would have 

 soon exposed and overwhelmed any attempt at exaggera- 

 tion, let us listen to the testimony of " Dorset," writing in 

 the Sjyor ting Magazine, November, 1836. After expressing 

 his astonishment at the difficulties Mr. Smith contended 

 against and overcame in Hants, where, to use his own 

 forcible expression, he "screwed odd ends of a country 

 together," he thus proceeds : 



" Of Mr. Smith, as a huntsman, it is needless to speak 

 here, or indeed anywhere. He ranks with the first pro- 

 fessors of this noble science ; and as the first horseman of 

 the age, as well as the most accomplished huntsman of 

 the present day, his name will be enrolled historically 

 in the deathless pages of the chronicles of the chase, and 

 among those who have advanced and aided the political 



