He looked at me. “Do you never read any sporting paper?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you ever hunt the carted stag?”
“No, I never did.”
“Well, you’ve been coursing, anyway.”
“Certainly; but there’s no comparing that with pigeon-shooting.”
“In coursing I admit,” he said, “there’s pleasure to the dogs, and some chance for the hare, who, besides, is not in captivity. Also that where there is no coursing there are few hares, in these days. And yet——”; he seemed to fall into a reverie.
Then, looking at me in a queer, mournful sort of way, he said suddenly:
“I don’t wish to attack that sport, when there are so many much worse, but by way of showing you how liable all these things are to contribute to the improvement of our species I will tell you a little experience of my own. When I was at college I was in a rather sporting set; we hunted, and played at racing, and loved to be ‘au courant’ with all that sort of thing. One year it so happened that the uncle of one of us won the Waterloo Cup with a greyhound whose name was—never mind. We became at once ardent lovers of the sport of coursing, consumed by the desire to hold a Waterloo Cup Meeting in miniature, with rabbits for hares and our own terriers for greyhounds. Well, we held it; sixteen of us nominating our dogs. Now kindly note that of those sixteen eight at least were members of the aristocracy, and all had been at public schools of standing and repute. For the purposes of our meeting, of course, we required fifteen rabbits caught and kept in bags. These we ordered of a local blackguard, with a due margin over to provide against such of the rabbits as might die of fright before they were let out, or be too terrified to run after being loosed. We made the fellow whose uncle had won the Waterloo Cup judge, apportioned among ourselves the other officers, and assembled—the judge on horseback, in case a rabbit might happen to run, say, fifty yards. Assembled with us were many local cads, two fourth-rate bookies, our excited, yapping terriers, and twenty-four bagged rabbits. The course was cleared. Two of us advanced, holding our terriers by the loins; the judge signed that he was ready; the first rabbit was turned down. It crept out of the bag, and squatted, close to the ground, with its ears laid back. The local blackguard stirred it with his foot. It crept two yards, and squatted closer. All the terriers began shrieking their little souls out, all the cads began to yell, but the rabbit did not move—its heart, you see, was broken. At last the local blackguard took it up and wrung its neck. After that some rabbits ran, and some did not, till all were killed! The terrier of one of us was judged victor by him whose uncle had won the Waterloo Cup; and we went back to our colleges to drink everybody’s health. Now, my friend, mark! We were sixteen decent youths, converted by infection into sixteen rabbit-catching cads. Two of us are dead; but the rest of us—what do we think of it now? I tell you this little incident, to confirm you in your feeling that pigeon-shooting, coursing, and the like, tend to improve our species, even here in England.”