128 THE BEST SEASON ON RECORD. 



llglitened days are held to be not out of place on feminine 

 lips, nor even, I am induced to believe, on feminine limbs 

 and frames) should not be donned when thermometer 

 registers 45° and barometer is at the top of the tree with 

 a southerly wind. Positively it was a shocking spectacle 

 on Friday, to the eye of anyone who set store on the 

 personal appearance of his intimate friends ! A melting 

 mood in practical sympathy might well be pardoned to 

 the observer, when all around him were bathed in a 

 midday moisture defying any delicate synonym. And 

 all this in pursuit of a twisting, twirling fox — or rather, 

 of hounds they could not reach, by reason of the devas- 

 tating railway that ruins the Scraptoft and Keyham 

 re<^ion. If any individual exception could combat the 

 overpowering heat it was the bold rider " whose cheeks 

 were fanned, on the other hand, by the galloping grey, 

 seeu boltiug away " (For remainder, see Ingarsby 

 Legends, Trial Canto). 



This Quorn Friday commenced at Keyham, with all 

 the honours of a fite Leicestrian and a show of equipage 

 and equestrianism that did credit to our flourishing city. 

 But the clement flooding the covertside at Scraptoft was 

 the schoolboys — who came in such shoals as Leech never 

 dreamed of when he drew his picture of Home for the 

 Holidays. What funny little fellows on funny little nags 

 were many of them I I am not referring thus presump- 

 tuously to the sturdy thrusters just sprouting into man- 

 hood — who are dubbed mashers almost ere breeched and 

 birched, and who are encased in collars so lofty that their 

 young elders of Melton and Meynell have been utterly 



