reason he will do, and do it with the least delay that is compatible with discretion, and with the least possible disturbance of his rider's equilibrium. He will not strike unless he slips, and he will not be apt to slip. He will not fall if he can help it even if he strikes; but if he does fall, reader, get out from under him, for he is heavier than you are.

As we jog down the road through the village toward Bleak House, a four-inhand drag is picking up its load at the Big Tree. Another is rounding the bend ahead of us. Horsemen by twos and threes are going our way; clearly the Hunt and its adherents will be out in force. Half a mile beyond the village is Bleak House, lying well back from the road, with a broad open lawn between; and beyond, the valley serene in the mellow sunlight. It is a clear day, but there is a bluish tinge to the hills on the other side that adds to their beauty. Pilate goes to the stable with a groom. Before going into the house the obliging reader looks about him and admits that it is a lively scene. Horsemen and vehicles of all sorts are constantly arriving. The big yellow coach yonder has brought the people from Ashantee. The pony fourin-hand before that dwarf break belongs to the valley. Another four-in-hand, just coming in the gate with a considerable load, hails from Rochester. There would be more than three four-in-hands at this meet if it were not for the fact that it takes fast driving on the road to get a favorable view of the run, and four-inhands, though picturesque, and good carriers, are very poorly adapted to fast driving.

People who mean to see the hunt from the road are in light two-seated wagons, buckboards, and buggies, which will stand some jolting, and can be driven across the fields.

Look! Here come the hounds! And is that the M. F. H. with them? No. That is the first whip, and that lash, cracking like the Fourth of July as he marshals his pack into the gate, is the symbol of his authority. There the Master comes now, driving two horses before a high buggy. There is no more time to spare, unless a man is content to ride on the memory of his breakfast.

A word with the hostess, a word or two with a good many other ladies, divers fragments of discourse with men, some round-of-beef, some ham, some bread,

some salad, some whiskey (a finger and a half) in some water-that is lunch.

How the lawn has filled up! Every sort of vehicle now, gay and sombre, fresh and worn; coaches, surreys, buckboards, farmers' light wagons with farmers' families in them; buggies, phaetons, pony wagons; and see over there, those two little girls on tricycles? The Bleak House Meet seems popular hereabouts. Ah! here comes Pilate! We'd better mount. Thanks. One hole shorter, please! That's it.

What a field!

Fifty riders, as near as six, seven, eight, nine That's a good many.

I can count, and ladies mounted. Will they be in the run? One of them will for sure; see, yonder she goes, in a brown habit, on an iron gray mare. Wherever the mare can go her mistress can ride her, and whatever turns them back turns plenty of good company back with them. Three or four other horsewomen may follow the hounds, and the rest of them mean to go by the road with carriages. But there come two that don't. Our friend the sporting banker from Batavia has brought his little girls over today, and bless me if he hasn't put them both on horseback! They are children, obviously; but I am told they ride with a dash and skill that are very scarce among adults.

The Master is jogging off, surrounded by his hounds, and the field is starting. A score of riders are from the valley, half of them farmers, and as many more from tributary cities. Buffalo is out six or seven strong. Rochester and Batavia send nine riders between them; Geneva sends a man, and there is a double handful of New-Yorkers.

Come along! It is more fun to ride in the front of the field than the rear; and it is safer besides, being less crowded. There go the hounds on the trail, at a pretty good pace from the start. Around here through the orchard there's a good place; those rails make pleasant jumping. A four-board fence, four-boarded from end to end. No choice of panels until somebody breaks one, and no time to wait for that. The ground is good, though, and looks level on the other side. There's a love, Pilate! Good horse. Thirty riders have been seen to cross a five-foot board fence in this valley without touching it. Ten of us in this field. Not a crowd; just a company. Into the road at that cor

ner, I think; it looks like a gate there. Chained? Then off here to the left. Give him time. Over now! Across the road. What, not do it? Now again-there!

that was more like it.

exhilarated reader finds himself in company with a dozen other men in a meadow on the Genesee Flats, close by a bend in the river. The hounds are panting and horses are streaming with sweat.

It

And so on, and so on, and so on, for about four miles, when, if Pilate holds out well and doesn't come to any grief, the

in from various directions, singly and in twos and threes. Some were outrun; some got lost. The least delay in a draghunt is fatal, for after the hounds once

look! the pack after him, all together, scudding over that green knoll for dear life. That's a sight worth coming for! After them now, Pilate! No, not across that wheat field, but around it. Yonder scuds our friend the Batavia financier, galloping ahead to open a gate for his little girls. Let us go that way, Pilate, and -Jeminy! That was one of the little girls that went by!

Through a gate, across a railroad, over a board fence, through a wood (fence), up a hill (fence), across a field with the hounds in sight and a fox in expectation. Then (fence) down a steep gully, turn at the bottom of it, and up presently to a baffled pack sniffing at a hole in the ground. The fox has got to earth, and will do to chase another day. We are his debtors, for he has given us a pretty hunting picture and a run that was fun while it lasted. It has not been long in the telling, but the afternoon is gone, and there is only about time enough left to get back to the Homestead library, and discourse there a little while and swap experiences before separating.

To an observer who watched the byplay of a State convention last fall, with the desire to learn what induced men to go into politics, it seemed obvious that one very great attraction was the community of interest which political considerations establish between man and man. The intercourse of the delegates was lively and stirring; they had matters to talk about in which they were vitally concerned. Their talk was eager and spontaneous, and all their faculties kept constantly on the alert. It seemed worth a very considerable amount of trouble to have one's contemporaneous human interest so aroused.

No doubt it is something that way about fox-hunting. Merely to be brought into quick sympathy with certain interests and aspirations of a lot of other men is worth a considerable outlay of time and trouble. Such an endless amount of pleasant gossip about horses and hounds, fences, foxes, riders, and weather grows out of hunting! "I used to know Barney pretty well," said a recent convert, "and used to find great satisfaction in talking religion to him; but when he took to hunting, he took to it so confounded hard that for two years past there has been no such thing as protracted conversation with him on any subject except horse and sport. It

really got to be hard to have any fun with him. But after I had been out two or three times with the hounds I practically got him back, and now we can gossip by the hour about moving accidents of flood and field,' and never know a dull moment." To be one of a score or two of people who are violently interested in the same sport is a very considerable source of delight, and entirely legitimate as far as it goes.

And of course another source of happiness that pertains to hunting is to ride a good horse across country. A man with a great horse in full performance under him is not necessarily a great man, but he feels as if he were, and the feeling is undeniably pleasant. A man may use a horse for ten years in the ordinary way, under saddle or between shafts, and never really have occasion to find out what there is in him. But in hunting, a horse's powers are constantly being tested. The fences he takes and the way he takes them, the company he keeps, his appearance, behavior, and miscellaneous abilities, are constantly under observation and the subjects of comment. The result is a vast stimulation of the natural human interest in horse and an inconceivably vast amount of horse-talk, which, if not so profitable intellectually as some conversation, is wholesome, sinless, and very agreeable to those concerned. It is a great accomplishment to be able to talk any kind of horse, and it seems to be considerably easier to learn to talk hunter than trotting-horse or racer.

But to the sincere fox hunter, horses are primarily a means of enabling a man to keep up with dogs. To be mounted and in the open air are pleasures of which he has a reasonable appreciation, but his joy is in the working of the hounds and the subtlety of the fox. Be it known that the fox is hunted because he is the only wild animal that can persist in the thick of civilization, who is swift enough and clever enough to be available for the chase. Wolves and deer fade away before the farmer; badgers are too slow; but the fox dotes on the farmer, and loves to loiter around a hay-stack or barnyard. Yet he is so intelligent and so fleet that, with a proper start, he can usually elude or run away from a pack of hounds.

To watch the quivering tails of the hounds as they suspect the footsteps of Reynard, to hear their vociferation as

suspicion deepens into certainty, and to follow them as they stream off across country in a bunch, is what the sincere hunter is out for. The hounds are his personal acquaintances, and he is able to estimate their various degrees of responsibility. He knows the country, too, and if every individual fox is not his long lost friend, at least he is versed in the general nature of the beast, and prepared to match wits with him. He is somewhat scornful of the tendency of the weaker members to be engrossed in horse and forget hunting in the excitement of mere riding. Drag-hunts he barely tolerates, and he differs from his horsy coadjutors in regarding fences not as opportunities, but as obstacles. The sarcastic attitude of the sincere fox-chaser towards drag-hunts is set forth in a manner too edifying to be ignored in this blank form lately used by the M. F. H. of the Genesee Valley Hunt:

GENESEE VALLEY HUNT.

To please those who are unable to ride until they have been lunched, a drag-hunt will take place from - o'clock.

at

This drag will be laid over several dangerously high fences close to the road, so that those who have "lunched " sufficiently will be able to compete with the grooms of gentlemen having horses for sale, before the eyes of the people in carriages.

Every precaution will be taken to keep clear of woods, gullies, ditches, swamps, or any obstruction whatsoever which might possibly call for intelligence or education in horse or rider.

Some very swift hounds have been secured, and the drag will be laid as strong as possible, so that it is sincerely hoped that gentlemen racing with each other will not be annoyed by these stupid animals. Should they prove a nuisance, however, the brutes will be dispensed with altogether and the line flagged.

It is very evident from this severe document that there is an influential opinion in the Genesee Valley that fox-hunting and steeple-chasing are distinct sports, and that the tendency to confuse them needs to be restrained. Nevertheless, drag-hunts, opprobriously termed "gallery-drags," have their uses even in the valley. Cross-country riding is not wholly to be despised even if there is no fox at the forward end of it.

October is a delightful month in the country; the weather is apt to be good and the riding pleasant. It is the gayest month of the year in the valley, and the one when more strangers come there than at other times. But it is a little early for fox-hunting. Moreover, it is

The

apt to be a dry month, and when the ground is dry, scent does not lie well, and a trail is difficult and often impossible to follow. Consequently, October sees many blank days. As a concession, therefore, to hard-working men who come from a distance for a single day's sport, and like to be sure of a run when they come, drag-hunts are arranged for the Saturdays in October. The meets on these Saturdays are set for two o'clock or thereabouts, and the lunch that precedes them helps to make the whole spectacle a valuable social function. But throughout October, besides the draghunts, there is wild-fox hunting twice a week-on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday hunts are early morning performances, the meets being at six o'clock the first half of the month, and later, as the days shorten, at half past seven. The Thursday meets are at noon, as are all the meets in November. On good days fields of from twenty to forty riders, usually with one or two ladies among them, meet the M. F. H. and his hounds at the advertised farm or corners or schoolhouse, and proceed to ride over the neighboring country, drawing one cover after another, traversing woods, going up and down gullies, and jumping any feuces or brooks or other unavoidable obstacles that happen to come in the way. It is a profitable way to spend an autumn day even if nothing comes of it but the exhilaration of being on a horse's back, in a charming country, in excellent company, with working hounds to watch and follow. But when something does come of it, when there is a find and a good run, then there is sport enough, and sometimes to spare. To keep the hounds in sight and be in first at the death is what every man and every horse is after. Then the man who thinks he knows foxhunting rides according to his knowledge and the ability of his horse, and the man who doesn't know it tries to follow the man who he thinks knows best.

It is always a case where, however many are called, comparatively few are chosen. Before the fox has crossed his second field the crowd has begun to straggle out, and if the run is of any length only two or three see the end of it. Competition is the life of all sport, and of course there is plenty of it in foxhunting. Besides the very stirring competition of speed and sagacity between