Good digestion wait on appetite

Good digestion wait on appetite

Good digestion wait on appetite

Good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both.

Not that I mean that every horseman should attempt to follow the hounds in the first flight, or even the second; because age, nerves, weight, or other good reasons may forbid: but every man who keeps a good hack may meet his friends at cover side, enjoy the morning air, with a little pleasant chat, and follow the hounds, if not in the front, in the rear, galloping across pastures, trotting through bridle gates, creeping through gaps, and cantering along the green rides of a wood, thus causing a healthy excitement, with no painful reaction: and if, unhappily, soured or overpressed by work and anxious thoughts, drinking in such draughts of Lethe as can no otherwise be drained.

Living within a couple of hours distance of a pack of hounds

Living within a couple of hours distance of a pack of hounds

Living within a couple of hours’ distance of a pack of hounds

Every man who can ride, and, living within a couple of hours’ distance of a pack of hounds, can spare a day now and then, should hunt. It will improve his horsemanship, enlarge his circle of acquaintance, as well as his tastes and sympathies, and make, as Shakspeare hath it

Dick Christian and the Marquis of Hastings

Dick Christian and the Marquis of Hastings

Dick Christian and the Marquis of Hastings

Advantage of hunting. Libels on. Great men who have hunted. Popular notion unlike reality. Dick Christian and the Marquis of Hastings. Fallacy of lifting a horse refuted. Hints on riding at fences. Harriers discussed. Stag-hunting a necessity and use where time an object. Hints for novices. Tally-ho! expounded. To feed a horse after a hard ride. Expenses of horse keep. Song by Squire Warburton, A word ere we start.

Hunting.

Hunting.

The sailor who rides on the ocean,
Delights when the stormy winds blow:
Wind and steam, what are they to horse motion?
Sea cheers to a land Tally-ho?
The canvas, the screw, and the paddle,
The stride of the thorough-bred hack,
When, fastened like glue to the saddle,
We gallop astern of the pack.
Tarporley Hunt Song, 1855.

Complacently smoothing the brim

Complacently smoothing the brim

Complacently smoothing the brim

Old wiseheads, complacently smoothing the brim,
May jeer at my velvet, and call it a whim;
They may think in a cap little wisdom there dwells;
They may say he who wears it should wear it with bells;
But when Broadbrim lies flat,
I will answer him pat,
Oh! who but a crackskull would ride in a hat!
Squire Warburton.

At an inquest on a young lady killed at Totnes in September last, it appeared that she lost her seat and hung by a crinoline petticoat from the right hand pommel!

Rails and Double Ditch.

In their own particular district

In their own particular district

In their own particular district

There is a certain class of sporting snobs who endeavour to enhance their own consequence or indulge their cynical humour by talking with the utmost contempt of any variation from the kind of hunting-dress in use, in their own particular district. The best commentary on the supercilious tailoring criticism of these gents is to be found in the fact that within a century every variety of hunting clothes has been in and out of fashion, and that the dress in fashion with the Quorn hunt in its most palmy days was not only the exact reverse of the present fashion in that flying country, but, if comfort and convenience are to be regarded, as ridiculous as brass helmets, tight stocks, and buttoned-up red jackets for Indian warfare. It consisted, as may be seen in old Alken’s and Sir John Dean Paul’s hunting sketches, of a high-crowned hat, a high tight stock, a tight dress coat, with narrow skirts that could protect neither the chest, stomach, or thighs, long tight white cord breeches, and pale top-boots thrust low down the leg, the tops being supposed to be cleaned with champagne. Leather breeches, caps, and brown top-boots were voted slow in those days. But the men went well as they do in every dress.

The patent black leather Napoleon

The patent black leather Napoleon

The patent black leather Napoleon

For men of moderate means, the patent black leather Napoleon, which costs from 3l. 10s. to 4l. 4s., and can be cleaned with a wet sponge in five minutes, is the neatest and most economical boot one in which travelling does not put you under any obligation to your host’s servants.

I have often found the convenience of patent leather boots when staying with a party at the house of a master of hounds, while others, as the hounds were coming out of the kennel, were in an agony for tops entrusted two or three days previously to a not-to-be-found servant. In this point of the boots I differ from the author of A Word ere we Start; but then, squires of ten thousand a-year are not supposed to understand the shifts of those who on a twentieth part of that income manage to enjoy a good deal of sport with all sorts of hounds and all sorts of horses.