The master who can make that influence suffice without
swearing is indeed a great man. Now-a-days swearing is so
distasteful to the world at large, that great efforts are made to
rule without it, and some such efforts are successful; but any
man who has hunted for the last twenty years will bear me out in
saying that hard words in a master's mouth used to be considered
indispensable. Now and then a little irony is tried. "I wonder,
sir, how much you'd take to go home ?" I once heard a master ask
of a red-coated stranger who was certainly more often among the
hounds than he need have been. "Nothing on earth, sir, while you
carry on as you are doing just at present," said the stranger.
The master accepted the compliment, and the stranger sinned no
more.
There are some positions among mankind which are so peculiarly
blessed that the owners of them seem to have been specially
selected by Providence for happiness on earth in a degree
sufficient to raise the malice and envy of all the world around.
An English country gentleman with ten thousand a year must have
been so selected. Members of Parliament with seats for counties
have been exalted after the same unjust fashion. Popular masters
of old-established hunts sin against their fellows in the same
way. But when it comes to a man to fill up all these positions in
England, envy and malice must be dead in the land if he be left
alive to enjoy their fruition.
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