ing man had his hunting near to him. He was a
country gentleman who considered himself to be energetic if he went out
twice a week, and in doing this he rarely left his house earlier for
that purpose than he would leave it for others. At certain periods of
the year he would, perhaps, be out before dawn; but then the general
habits of his life conduced to early rising; and his distances were
short. If he kept a couple of horses for the purpose he was well
mounted, and these horses were available for other uses. He rode out and
home, jogging slowly along the roads, and was a martyr to no ambition.
All that has been changed now. The man who hunts and likes it, either
takes a small hurting seat away from the comforts of his own home, or he
locates himself miserably at an inn, or he undergoes the purgatory of
daily journeys up and down from London, doing that for his hunting which
no consideration of money-making would induce him to do for his
business. His hunting requires from him everything, his time, his money,
his social hours, his rest, his sweet morning sleep; nay, his very
dinners have to be sacrificed to this Moloch!

Let us follow him on an ordinary day. His groom comes to his bed-chamber
at seven o'clock, and tells him that it has frozen during the night. If
he be a London man, using the train for his hunting, he knows nothing of
the frost, and does not learn whether the day be practicable or not till
he finds himself down in the country. But we will suppose our friend to
be located in some hunting district, and accordingly his groom
visits him with tidings. "Is it freezing now?" he asks from under the
bedclothes. And even the man who does like it at such moments almost
wishes that the answer should be plainly in the affirmative. Then
swiftly again to the arms of Morpheus he might take himself, and ruffle
his temper no further on that morning! He desires, at any rate, a
decisive answer. To be or not to be as regards that day's hurting is
what he now wants to know. But that is exactly what the groom cannot
tell him. "It's just a thin crust of frost, sir, and the s'mometer is
a standing at the pint." That is the answer which the man makes, and
on that he has to come to a decision! For half an hour he lies doubting
while his water is getting cold, and then sends for his man again. The
thermometer is still standing at the point, but the man has tried the
crust with his heel and found it to be very thin. The man who hun