us purpose. When hounds are running,
the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride
in some direction, even though it be in a wrong direction. He can then
flatter himself that he is riding wide and making a line for himself.
But to be entrapped into a field without any power of getting out of it;
to see the red backs of the forward men becoming smaller and smaller in
the distance, till the last speck disappears over some hedge; to see the
fence before you and know that it is too much for you; to ride round and
round in an agony of despair which is by no means mute, and at last to
give sixpence to some boy to conduct you back into the road; that is
wretched: that is real unhappiness. I am, therefore, very persistent in
my advice to the man who purposes to hunt without jumping. Let him not
jump at all. To jump, but only to jump a little, is fatal. Let him think
of Jones.

The man who hunts and doesn't jump, presuming him not to be a duke or
any man greatly established as a Nimrod in the hunting world, generally
comes out in a black coat and a hat, so that he may not be specially
conspicuous in his deviations from the line of the running. He began his
hunting probably in search of exercise, but has gradually come to add a
peculiar amusement to that pursuit; and of a certain phase of hunting he
at last learns more than most of those who ride closest to the hounds.
He becomes wonderfully skillful in surmising the line which a fox may
probably take, and in keeping himself upon roads parallel to the ruck
of the horsemen. He is studious of the wind, and knows to a point of
the compass whence it is blowing. He is intimately conversant with every
covert in the country; and, beyond this, is acquainted with every earth
in which foxes have had their nurseries, or are likely to locate them.
He remembers the drains on the different farms in which the hunted
animal may possible take refuge, and has a memory even for rabbit-holes.
His eye becomes accustomed to distinguish the form of a moving horseman
over half-a-dozen fields; and let him see but a cap of any leading man,
and he will know which way to turn himself. His knowledge of the country
is correct to a marvel. While the man who rides straight is altogether
ignorant of his whereabouts, and will not even distinguish the woods
through which he has ridden scores of times, the man who rides and never
jumps always knows where he is with the utmost accuracy. Wher