e that they might see
the man that they had to put out." The hand that holds the bridle holds
the pen. The night after he has been hare-hunting--Friday, November the
sixteenth, 1821, at Old Hall, in Herefordshire--he writes down this note
of it:

"A whole day most delightfully passed a hare-hunting, with a pretty pack
of hounds kept here by Messrs. Palmer. They put me upon a horse that
seemed to have been made on purpose for me, strong, tall, gentle and
bold; and that carried me either over or through every thing. I, who am
just the weight of a four-bushel sack of good wheat, actually sat on her
back from daylight in the morning to dusk (about nine hours) without once
setting my foot on the ground. Our ground was at Orcop, a place about
four miles distance from this place. We found a hare in a few minutes
after throwing off; and, in the course of the day, we had to find four,
and were never more than ten minutes in finding. A steep and naked
ridge, lying between two flat valleys, having a mixture of pretty large
fields and small woods, formed our ground. The hares crossed the ridge
forward and backward, and gave us numerous views and very fine sport. I
never rode on such steep ground before; and, really, in going up and down
some of the craggy places, where the rain had washed the earth from the
rocks, I did think, once or twice of my neck, and how Sidmouth would like
to see me. As to the _cruelty_, as some pretend, of this sport, that
point I have, I think, settled, in one of the chapters of my 'Year's
Residence in America.' As to the expense, a pack, even a full pack of
harriers, like this, costs less than two bottles of wine a day with their
inseparable concomitants. And as to the _time_ spent, hunting is
inseparable from _early rising_; and, with habits of early rising, who
ever wanted time for any business?"

Borrow could not resist this man's plain living and plain thinking, or
his sentences that are like acts--like blows or strides. And if he had
needed any encouragement in the expression of prejudices, Cobbett offered
it. The following, from "Cottage Economy," will serve as an example. It
is from a chapter on "Brewing":--

"The practice of tea drinking must render the frame feeble and unfit to
encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it
deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back.
Hence succeeds a softness, an effeminacy, a seeking for the fires