field before him. In such a position, is it possible that a man
should like it?

About four o'clock in the afternoon, when the other men are coming in,
he turns up at the hunting stables, and nobody asks him any questions.
He may have been doing fairly well for what anybody knows, and, as he
says nothing of himself, his disgrace is at any rate hidden. Why should
he tell that he had been nearly an hour on foot trying to catch his
horse, that he had sat himself down on a bank and almost cried, and that
he had drained his flask to the last drop before one o'clock? No one
need know the extent of his miseries. And no one does know how great is
the misery endured by those who hunt regularly, and who do not like it.

THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND DOES LIKE IT.

The man who hunts and does like it is an object of keen envy to the man
who hunts and doesn't; but he, too, has his own miseries, and I am not
prepared to say that they are always less aggravating than those endured
by his less ambitious brother in the field. He, too, when he comes to
make up his account, when he brings his hunting to book and inquires
whether his whistle has been worth its price, is driven to declare that
vanity and vexation of spirit have been the prevailing characteristics
of his hunting life. On how many evenings has he returned contented with
his sport? How many days has he declared to have been utterly wasted?
How often have frost and snow, drought and rain, wind and sunshine,
impeded his plans? for to a hunting man frost, snow, drought, rain, wind
and sunshine, will all come amiss. Then, when the one run of the season
comes, he is not there! He has been idle and has taken a liberty with
the day; or he has followed other gods and gone with strange hounds.
With sore ears and bitter heart he hears the exaggerated boastings of
his comrades, and almost swears that he will have no more of it. At the
end of the season he tells himself that the season's amusement has cost
him five hundred pounds; that he has had one good day, three days that
were not bad, and that all the rest have been vanity and vexation of
spirit. After all, it may be a question whether the man who hunts and
doesn't like it does not have the best of it.

When we consider what is endured by the hunting man the wonder is that
any man should like it. In the old days of Squire Western, and in the
old days too since the time of Squire Western, the old days of thirty
years since, the hunt