Yeast: a Problem | Page 7

shivering horses, and
clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A
soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother
Earth--what with match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in
summer, and dinner-giving in autumn--was fairly worn out, and put to
bed with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water cure.
There sat Lancelot by the cover-side, his knees aching with cold and
wet, thanking his stars that he was not one of the whippers-in who were
lashing about in the dripping cover, laying up for themselves, in
catering for the amusement of their betters, a probable old age of
bed-ridden torture, in the form of rheumatic gout. Not that he was at all
happy--indeed, he had no reason to be so; for, first, the hounds would
not find; next, he had left half-finished at home a review article on the
Silurian System, which he had solemnly promised an abject and
beseeching editor to send to post that night; next, he was on the
windward side of the cover, and dare not light a cigar; and lastly, his
mucous membrane in general was not in the happiest condition, seeing
that he had been dining the evening before with Mr. Vaurien of
Rottenpalings, a young gentleman of a convivial and melodious turn of
mind, who sang--and played also--as singing men are wont--in more
senses than one, and had 'ladies and gentlemen' down from town to stay
with him; and they sang and played too; and so somehow between
vingt-un and champagne-punch, Lancelot had not arrived at home till
seven o'clock that morning, and was in a fit state to appreciate the
feelings of our grandfathers, when, after the third bottle of port, they
used to put the black silk tights into their pockets, slip on the leathers
and boots, and ride the crop-tailed hack thirty miles on a winter's night,
to meet the hounds in the next county by ten in the morning. They are
'gone down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of heroes,' with John
Warde of Squerries at their head--the fathers of the men who conquered
at Waterloo; and we their degenerate grandsons are left instead, with

puny arms, and polished leather boots, and a considerable taint of
hereditary disease, to sit in club-houses, and celebrate the progress of
the species.
Whether Lancelot or his horse, under these depressing circumstances,
fell asleep; or whether thoughts pertaining to such a life, and its fitness
for a clever and ardent young fellow in the nineteenth century, became
gradually too painful, and had to be peremptorily shaken off, this
deponent sayeth not; but certainly, after five-and- thirty minutes of
idleness and shivering, Lancelot opened his eyes with a sudden start,
and struck spurs into his hunter without due cause shown; whereat
Shiver-the-timbers, who was no Griselda in temper--(Lancelot had
bought him out of the Pytchley for half his value, as unrideably vicious,
when he had killed a groom, and fallen backwards on a rough-rider, the
first season after he came up from Horncastle)--responded by a furious
kick or two, threw his head up, put his foot into a drain, and sprawled
down all but on his nose, pitching Lancelot unawares shamefully on the
pommel of his saddle. A certain fatality, by the bye, had lately attended
all Lancelot's efforts to shine; he never bought a new coat without
tearing it mysteriously next day, or tried to make a joke without
bursting out coughing in the middle . . . and now the whole field were
looking on at his mishap; between disgust and the start he turned
almost sick, and felt the blood rush into his cheeks and forehead as he
heard a shout of coarse jovial laughter burst out close to him, and the
old master of the hounds, Squire Lavington, roared aloud--
'A pretty sportsman you are, Mr. Smith, to fall asleep by the cover- side
and let your horse down--and your pockets, too! What's that book on
the ground? Sapping and studying still? I let nobody come out with my
hounds with their pocket full of learning. Hand it up here, Tom; we'll
see what it is. French, as I am no scholar! Translate for us, Colonel
Bracebridge!'
And, amid shouts of laughter, the gay Guardsman read out,--
'St. Francis de Sales: Introduction to a Devout Life.'
Poor Lancelot! Wishing himself fathoms under-ground, ashamed of his

book, still more ashamed of himself for his shame, he had to sit there
ten physical seconds, or spiritual years, while the colonel solemnly
returned him the book, complimenting him on the proofs of its
purifying influence which he had given the night before, in helping to
throw the turnpike-gate into the river.
But 'all things do end,' and so did this; and the silence of the hounds
also;