do with
the hounds may be light, but it should have a good crook and be stiff
enough to stop a gate. A small steel stud outside the crook prevents the
gate from slipping; flat lashes of a brown colour have recently come
into fashion, but they are mere matters of fashion like the colour of
top boots, points to which only snobs pay any attention--that is, those
asses who pin their faith in externals, and who, in the days of
pigtails, were ready to die in defence of those absurd excrescences.

The stock of a whip made by Callow for a hunting nobleman to present to
a steeple-chasing and fox-hunting professional, was of oak, a yard long,
with a buck-horn crook, and a steel stud; but then the presentee is six
feet high.

Every hunting-whip should have a lash, but it need not be long. The lash
may be required to rouse a hound under your horse's feet, or turn the
pack; as for whipping off the pack from the fox in the absence of the
huntsman, the whips and the master, that is an event that happens to one
per cent of the field once in a lifetime, although it is a common and
favourite anecdote after dinner. But then Saint Munchausen presides over
the mahogany where fox-hunting feats are discussed. One use of a lash is
to lead a horse by putting it through the rings of the snaffle, and to
flip him up as you stand on the bank when he gets stuck fast, or dead
beat in a ditch or brook. I once owed the extrication of my horse from a
brook with a deep clay bottom entirely to having a long lash to my whip;
for when he had plumped in close enough to the opposite bank for me to
escape over his head, I was able first to guide him to a shelving spot,
and then make him try one effort more by adroit flicks on his rump at a
moment when he seemed prepared to give in and be drowned. In leading a
horse, always pass the reins through the ring of the snaffle, so that if
he pulls he is held by the mouth, not by the top of his head.

The riding costume of a gentleman should be suitable without being
groomish. It is a fact that does not seem universally known, that a man
does not ride any better for dressing like a groom.

It has lately been the fashion to discard straps. This is all very well
if the horse and the rider can keep the trousers down, which can only be
done by keeping the legs away from the horse's sides; but when the
trousers rise to the top of the boot, and the stocking or bare leg
appears, the sooner straps or knee-breeches are adopt