If any man can
predicate anything of the run of a fox, it is the farmer.
I had almost said that if any one knew anything of scent, it is
the farmer; but of scent I believe that not even the farmer knows
anything. But he knows very much as to the lie of the country,
and should my gentle reader by chance have taken a glass or two
of wine above ordinary over night, the effect of which will
possibly be a temporary distaste to straight riding, no one's
knowledge as to the line of the lanes is so serviceable as that
of the farmer.
As to riding, there is the ambitious farmer and the unambitious
farmer; the farmer who rides hard, that is, ostensibly hard, and
the farmer who is simply content to know where the hounds are,
and to follow them at a distance which shall maintain him in that
knowledge. The ambitious farmer is not the hunting farmer in his
normal condition; he is either one who has an eye to selling his
horse, and, riding with that view, loses for the time his
position as farmer; or he is some exceptional tiller of the soil
who probably is dangerously addicted to hunting as another man is
addicted to drinking; and you may surmise respecting him that
things will not go well with him after a year or two. The friend
of my heart is the farmer who rides, but rides without
sputtering; who never makes a show of it, but still is always
there; who feels it to be no disgrace to avoid a run of fences
when his knowledge tells him that this may be done without danger
of his losing his place.
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