How such an one must laugh in his sleeve at the five
hunters of the young swell who, after all, is brought to grief in
the middle of the season, because he has got nothing to ride! A
farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go, never throws out
curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master, he is
never showy. He does not paw, and prance, and arch his neck, and
bid the world admire his beauties; but, like his master, he is
useful; and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.
O fortunatus nimium agricola, who has one horse, and that a good
one, in the middle of a hunting country !
THE MAN WHO HUNTS AND NEVER JUMPS.
The British public who do not hunt believe too much in the
jumping of those who do. It is thought by many among the laity
that the hunting man is always in the air, making clear flights
over five-barred gates, six-foot walls, and double posts and
rails, at none of which would the average hunting man any more
think of riding than he would at a small house. We used to hear
much of the Galway Blazers, and it was supposed that in County
Galway a stiff-built wall six feet high was the sort of thing
that you customarily met from field to field when hunting in that
comfortable county. Such little impediments were the ordinary
food of a real Blazer, who was supposed to add another foot of
stonework and a sod of turf when desirous of making himself
conspicuous in his moments of splendid ambition.
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