home with them, weary after a blank day, to the misery of which
his incompetency has, perhaps, contributed! A master of hounds should be
an anxious man; so anxious that the privilege of talking to pretty girls
should be of little service to him.

One word I will say as to the manners of a master of hounds, and then I
will have done. He should be an urbane man, but not too urbane; and he
should certainly be capable of great austerity. It used to be said that
no captain of a man-of-war could hold his own without swearing. I will
not quite say the same of a master of hounds, or the old ladies who
think hunting to be wicked will have a handle against me. But I will
declare that if any man could be justified in swearing, it would be a
master of hounds. The troubles of the captain are as nothing to his.
The captain has the ultimate power of the sword, or at any rate of the
fetter, in his hands, while the master has but his own tongue to trust,
his tongue and a certain influence which his position gives him. The
master who can make that influence suffice without swearing is indeed a
great man. Now-a-days swearing is so distasteful to the world at large,
that great efforts are made to rule without it, and some such efforts
are successful; but any man who has hunted for the last twenty years
will bear me out in saying that hard words in a master's mouth used to
be considered indispensable. Now and then a little irony is tried. "I
wonder, sir, how much you'd take to go home?" I once heard a master ask
of a red-coated stranger who was certainly more often among the hounds
than he need have been. "Nothing on earth, sir, while you carry on as
you are doing just at present," said the stranger. The master accepted
the compliment, and the stranger sinned no more.

There are some positions among mankind which are so peculiarly blessed
that the owners of them seem to have been specially selected by
Providence for happiness on earth in a degree sufficient to raise the
malice and envy of all the world around. An English country gentleman
with ten thousand a year must have been so selected. Members of
Parliament with seats for counties have been exalted after the same
unjust fashion. Popular masters of old-established hunts sin against
their fellows in the same way. But when it comes to a man to fill up all
these positions in England, envy and malice must be dead in the land if
he be left alive to enjoy their fruition.

HOW TO RIDE