sooner and run straighter. And he will be punctual to his time, giving
quarter to none and asking none himself. He will draw fairly through the
day, and indulge no caprices as to coverts. The laws, indeed, are
never written, but they exist and are understood; and when they be too
recklessly disobeyed, the master of hounds falls from his high place and
retires into private life, generally with a broken heart. In the hunting
field, as in all other communities, republics, and governments, the
power of the purse is everything. As long as that be retained, the
despotism of the master is tempered and his rule will be beneficent.

Five hundred pounds a day is about the sum which a master should demand
for hunting an average country, that is, so many times five hundred
pounds a year as he may hunt days in the week. If four days a week be
required of him, two thousand a year will be little enough. But as a
rule, I think masters are generally supposed to charge only for the
advertised days, and to give the byedays out of their own pocket. Nor
must it be thought that the money so subscribed will leave the master
free of expense. As I have said before, he should be a rich man.
Whatever be the subscription paid to him, he must go beyond it, very
much beyond it, or there will grow up against him a feeling that he is
mean, and that feeling will rob him of all his comfort. Hunting men in
England wish to pay for their own amusement; but they desire that more
shall be spent than they pay. And in this there is a rough justice,
that roughness of justice which pervades our English institutions. To a
master of hounds is given a place of great influence, and into his
hands is confided an authority the possession of which among his
fellow-sportsmen is very pleasant to him. For this he is expected to
pay, and he does pay for it. A Lord Mayor is, I take it, much in the
same category. He has a salary as Lord Mayor, but if he do not spend
more than that on his office he becomes a byword for stinginess among
Lord Mayors To be Lord Mayor is his whistle, and he pays for it.

For myself, if I found myself called upon to pay for one whistle or the
other, I would sooner be a master of hounds than a Lord Mayor. The power
is certainly more perfect, and the situation, I think, more splendid.
The master of hounds has no aldermen, no common council, no liverymen.
As long as he fairly performs his part of the compact, he is altogether
without control. He is n