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.