He will
drop into the running, as it were out of the clouds, when the
select few have settled down steadily to their steady work; and
the select few will never look upon him as one who, after that,
is likely to fall out of their number. He goes on certainly to
the kill, and then retires a little out of the circle, as though
he had trotted in at that spot from his ordinary parochial
occupations, just to see the hounds.
For myself I own that I like the hunting parson. I generally find
him to be about the pleasantest man in the field, with the most
to say for himself, whether the talk be of hunting, of politics,
of literature, or of the country. He is never a hunting man
unalloyed, unadulterated, and unmixed, a class of man which is
perhaps of all classes the most tedious and heavy in hand. The
tallow-chandler who can talk only of candles, or the barrister
who can talk only of his briefs, is very bad; but the hunting man
who can talk only of his runs, is, I think, worse even than the
unadulterated tallow-chandler, or the barrister unmixed. Let me
pause for a moment here to beg young sportsmen not to fall into
this terrible mistake. Such bores in the field are, alas, too
common; but the hunting parson never sins after that fashion.
Though a keen sportsman, he is something else besides a
sportsman, and for that reason, if for no other, is always a
welcome addition to the crowd.
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