ls us through and through like
the free chase 'cross country behind the fleeing fox. Joyously we gallop
over the sward behind the yelping pack, as we clearly scent high, low,
jack and the game.

My ancestors are haughty English people from Piscataquis county, Maine.
For centuries, our rich, warm, red blood has been mellowed by the
elderberry wine and huckleberry juice of Moosehead lake; but now and
then it will assert itself and mantle in the broad and indestructible
cheek of our race. Ever and anon in our family you will notice the
slender triangular chest, the broad and haughty sweep of abdomen, and
the high, intellectual expanse of pelvic bone, which denotes the true
Englishman; proud, high-spirited, soaked full of calm disdain, wearing
checked pantaloons, and a soft, flabby tourist's hat that has a bow at
both ends, so that a man cannot get too drunk to put it on his head
wrong.

[Illustration]

I know that here is democratic America, where every man has to earn his
living or marry rich, people will scorn my high-born love of the
fox-chase, and speak in a slighting manner of my wild, wild yearn for
the rush and scamper of the hunt. By Jove, but it is joy indeed to
gallop over the sward and the cover, and the open land, the meet and the
cucumber vines of the Plebian farmer, to run over the wife of the
peasant and tramp her low, coarse children into the rich mould, to
"sick" the hounds upon the rude rustic as he paris greens his potatoes,
to pry open the jaws of the pack and return to the open-eyed peasant
the quivering seat of his pantaloons, returning it to him not because it
is lacking in its merit, but because it is not available.

Ah, how the pulses thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold,
anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated
fracture of the dura mater through which the gas is gently escaping.

Let others rave over the dreamy waltz and the false joys of the skating
rink, but give me the maddening yelp of the pack in full cry as it
chases the speckled two-year-old of the low-born rustic across the open
and into the pond.

Let others sing of the zephyrs that fan the white sails of their
swift-flying yacht, but give me a wild gallop at the tail of my
high-priced hounds and six weeks at the hospital with a fractured rib
and I am proud and happy. All our family are that way. We do not care
for industry for itself alone. We are too proud ever to become slaves to
h