But the man who never jumps is not usually of a
benevolent nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up
a little story against the boaster.
Such is the amusement of the man who rides and never jumps.
Attached to every hunt there will be always one or two such men.
Their evidence is generally reliable; their knowledge of the
country is not to be doubted; they seldom come to any severe
trouble; and have usually made for themselves a very wide circle
of hunting acquaintances by whom they are quietly respected. But
I think that men regard them as they do the chaplain on board a
man-of-war, or as they would regard a herald on a field of
battle. When men are assembled for fighting, the man who
notoriously does not fight must feel himself to be somewhat lower
than his brethren around him, and must be so esteemed by others.
THE HUNTING PARSON.
I feel some difficulty in dealing with the character I am now
about to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn
the hunting parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his
profession; and, for myself, I am not prepared to say that the
world is wrong. Had my pastors and masters, my father and mother,
together with the other outward circumstances of my early life,
made a clergyman of me, I think that I should not have hunted, or
at least, I hope that I might have abstained; and yet, for the
life of me, I cannot see the reason against it, or tell any man
why a clergyman should not ride to hounds.
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