Twenty years ago
I rode in Galway now and then, and I found the six-foot walls all
shorn of their glory, and that men whose necks were of any value
were very anxious to have some preliminary knowledge of the
nature of the fabric, whether for instance it might be solid or
built of loose stones, before they trusted themselves to an
encounter with a wall of four feet and a half. And here, in
England, history, that nursing mother of fiction, has given
hunting men honours which they here never fairly earned. The
traditional five-barred gate is, as a rule, used by hunting men
as it was intended to be used by the world at large; that is to
say, they open it; and the double posts and rails which look so
very pretty in the sporting pictures, are thought to be very ugly
things whenever an idea of riding at them presents itself. It is
well that mothers should know, mothers full of fear for their
boys who are beginning, that the necessary jumping of the
hunting field is not after all of so very tremendous a nature;
and it may be well also to explain to them and to others that
many men hunt with great satisfaction to themselves who never by
any chance commit themselves to the peril of a jump, either big
or little.
And there is much excellent good sense in the mode of riding
adopted by such gentlemen.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56