It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn" by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village we hunt the 8.52. Morning after morning, if you watch from a high place, you can see our bowlers and squash hats just above the hedgerows bobbing down to the covert side. That one bobbing last is me.

As we trudge homeward under the star-lit skies all our racy anecdotes are of the fine fast runs we have had with the 8.52, the brave swinging of the tail carriage, the heavy work over the points, the check and find again at East Croydon main.... Those who arrive early at the meet in the morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put trains into the feminine gender. This is a slight compensation for having to pay again when they are challenged and can only pull out a complimentary pass to the Chrysanthemum Show.

As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his marmalade.

In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is hardly playing the game. Of the stout-hearted fellows who follow on foot, both Enderby and Jackson pass in front of my house and may be discerned dimly through a gap in the hedge, which was probably made for that purpose by the previous tenant. Or it may have been because the gate-latch sticks and he did not jump well. Enderby asserts that my house is nine minutes from the station, and Jackson says it is six, and therein lies the whole difference between optimism and pessimism. All I know is that, if I gather my hat, coat, Times, stick, pipe, tobacco and matches and put as many as possible of them in appropriate places just after Enderby has passed the gap, I catch the 8.52 nicely. If I do these things just after Jackson has passed I catch it nastily, just about the rear buffers. My proposal is that Enderby and Jackson should encourage me a little by wearing scarlet coats, so that I can see them twinkling more brightly through the gap in my hedge, and if they will do this I will promise to provide them both with hunting horns. I have pointed out that a "View halloo" from Enderby, followed by a stirring

"Tantivvy, Tantivvy, Tantivvy;
Tra-la, Tra-la, Tra-la"

from Jackson, will, if any power on earth can do it, bring me from my toast in time for my train in the morning.

I have explained to them that nothing can be pleasanter or more beautiful for the baker, the butcher and the grocer to look at every morning than Enderby and Jackson dressed in pink, with a despatch-case in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other. There must be other sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.

I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." I have replied that I cannot hear express trains when I am eating toast, and that the only warner I recognise is Plum Warner, who cannot by any stretch of language be called an express train. There the matter rests at present, and I suppose in a few days I shall miss the 8.52 again.

Happily I have now found out what to do when this occurs. Enderby and Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting from the undergrowth. When one has missed the 8.52 one cannot wait on the platform till 10.15, nor, on the other hand, having waved an airy good morning to the butcher, the baker and the grocer as I trotted along, can I very well go back and undo it. And then the derision at home, the half-drunk stirrup-cup of coffee standing tepid and forlorn. But, as I say, the 9.5 is a perfectly sound train. It is quite true that it goes to Brighton, but the weather has been very warm of late. I hate these splits in the local Hunt, but there it is.

Evoe.