GLORIOUS GOODWOOD 13 



The Immemorial hills are there, thank good- 

 ness little touched by ill-advised cultivation as 

 they are farther east. The woods vary scarcely 

 from year to year, except in seasonable changes. 

 If you care to pick up local country lore, you may 

 gather the same old stories about the truffle- 

 hunting dogs ; the frequent fox and the occasional 

 badger ; the trout which seem too big for the 

 streams they adorn ; the apocryphal big snakes ; 

 the wopses ; the hornets (four kill a man and five 

 settle a bullock) ; the poachers ; the lying-out 

 deer; the new men and the old.; the very little 

 men claiming this for their " native " who were, 

 to begin with, thought nothing of, like a prophet 

 in or out — which is it ? — of his own country, and 

 finished big in London ; and the game fowl for 

 whose fighting abilities no further use offers 

 because Cocking — the sport, not the village — 

 has been quite done away with. The yarn about 

 the bold smuggler, captain of the band, who, 

 challenged by the Preventive man in the *''oods," 

 downed 'un and left half a dozen kegs under the 

 defeated coastguardsman's bed next day and did 

 it all unbeknowst, is an annual so hardy as to 

 rank as a perennial classic which never alters, 

 save that the gentleman who ran the illicit goods 

 gradually becomes more and more terribly noble. 

 And the same jokes go with the same success 

 each night at pipe-smoke time in the pubs. One 

 ancient vested interest though, is being knocked 

 out by the march of civilisation, A genius 

 has started cycling for correct-card-distributing 

 purposes. The poor, old-fashioned, hard-working 

 bodies who used to run from Chichester for miles 

 to serve their customers are being easily defeated 

 by the innovators who slip over from the printing 



