In the Black Forest in Germany there are two stones standing to this day, _sixty feet_ apart, to commemorate the leap made across a chasm by a hunted deer, attested by several sportsmen who were eye-witnesses of the wonderful and desperate effort.
Of course, we must fall sometimes. Of course, without that little spice of what we can hardly call _danger_, but which produces what we may safely call _funk_, it wouldn’t be half the fan it is. Going down, indeed! Look at the column of advertisements, weather permitting, in the _Times_; look at the price of hay and corn; look at the collector’s accounts of assessed taxes for saddle-horses (if you can get them); look at Poole’s trade in coats, and Anderson’s in breeches, and Peel’s (not Sir Robert’s) in boots. Why, the very shoemakers, though on foot, hunt regularly. So do the tradesmen and the farmers, and all the liberal professions; the army, the navy, the House of Commons, the Peers of the realm, her Majesty’s Ministers, and the principal Commissioner of the Court of Bankruptcy; nay, the heir to the crown is an enthusiastic sportsman, and an excellent rider; and so _Floreat Diana!_ and God save the Queen!
Talking of falls brings me back to my broken collar-bone, and the bar of the Haycock. I must explain, then, how I came to be established as the habitual inhabitant of that snuggery.
After so wet a summer as that of 1860, I confess I was sanguine as to an open winter: I have always supported the doctrine of compensation. If we don’t get it in one way, we do in another. A deal of warmth was doubtless due on the year, and what was more natural than to anticipate an open season, and plenty of sport? With this conviction, I kept my eyes open all the summer, and raising my modest stud from the complement of three to five, was fortunate enough to purchase at Tattersall’s two raw-boned, Roman-nosed animals, called respectively “Apple-Jack” and “Tipple Cider,” who turned out to be sound, useful, and well-trained hunters. Lest I should delude the unwary into thinking it a good plan thus to put one’s hand into “the Lucky-bag,” let me observe, that I paid the full value for them, and esteem myself unusually fortunate not to have been “stuck,” or, in plain English, cheated out of good money for a bad horse.