My first ride on Carrickbeg was in the Leopardstown Chase [run on the final day of the Dublin Racing Festival]. With England frozen solid, he had not run for five weeks, and I had been leading the life of Riley―or rather of Soapy Sponge: ten wonderful days hunting in Ireland.

Of course, the fox and the hound play essential parts, and I wish I understood them better. I respect and envy those to whom every cry of a hound or a note of a horn brings an immediately recognizable image―the experts to whom one clever, successful cast means more than five minutes across the best of Leicestershire, Limerick, or Tipperary.