WALKING UP 149 
I say, to go on denying himself what suits him best, 
and to drive his ground because it is the fashion. He 
may be the owner of a good partridge estate, where 
he, his keepers, farmers and labourers are all on good 
terms, and the head of game is consequently always 
up to a certain average. He and his guests, and his 
father, and grandfather, and their guests, may have 
been able from time immemorial to kill eighty or 
a hundred brace of birds to four or five guns, while 
the keepers and beaters aforesaid may have inherited 
the traditions and perfected the knowledge which 
three generations of good sportsmen and loyal servants 
have handed down. 
Such an one should not be cavilled at, nor con- 
sidered to be behind the times because he prefers 
walking to driving his partridges, and some of his 
friends will find that he can teach a thing or two to 
those who devote themselves exclusively to the latter 
form of sport. 
Again, he may havea fancy for breeding retrievers, 
or may have a boy or boys, fresh from Eton or 
Harrow, for whom it is his great pleasure to find 
amusement, and his great ambition that they should 
turn out good all-round sportsmen. Here again he will 
be quite right to walk up his partridges. A retriever 
who has not been broken to heel, and to stick to a 
