ple who crowd with blood-thirsty eagerness to watch those
qualities exhibited in so tragic a fashion for their amusement? Do they
gain any of his qualities of skill and courage, and strength and
fearlessness in the face of death? No, they are merely brutalized by
cruel excitement--and while they applaud his skill and admire his
courage, they long most to watch him die. So--is it not?--with our
friend the fox. The huntsman invariably compliments him on his spirit
and his cunning, but what he wants is--the brush. He wants the
excitement of hunting the living thing to its death; and, let huntsmen
say what they will about the exhilaration of the horse exercise across
country as being the main thing, they know better--and, if it be true,
why don't they take it without the fox?"

"They do in America, as, of course, you know. There a man walks across
country trailing a stick, at the end of which is a piece of cloth
impregnated with some pungent scent which hounds love and mistake for
the real thing."

"Hard on the poor hounds!" smiled my friend. "Even worse than a red
herring. You could hardly blame the dogs if they mistook the man for
Actaeon and tore him to pieces."

"And I suspect that the huntsmen are no better satisfied."

"Yet, as we were saying, if the secret spring of their sport is not the
cruel delight of pursuing a living thing to its death, that American
plan should serve all the purposes, and give all the satisfaction for
which they claim to follow the hounds: the keen pleasure of a gallop
across country, the excitement of its danger, the pluck and pride of
taking a bad fence, and equally, too, the pleasure of watching the
hounds cleverly at work with their mysterious gift of scent. All the
same, I suspect there are few sportsmen who would not vote it a tame
substitute. Without something being killed, the zest, the 'snap,' is
gone. It is as depressing as a sham fight."

"Yes, that mysterious shedding of blood! what a part it has played in
human history! Even religion countenances it, and war glorifies it. Men
are never in higher spirits than when they are going to kill, or be
killed themselves, or see something else killed. Tennyson's 'ape and
tiger' die very hard in the tamest of us."

"Alas, indeed they do!" said my friend with a sigh. "But I do believe
that they are dying none the less. Just of late there has been a
reaction in favour of brute force, and people like you and me have been
ridiculed as old-