The usual wind-up of the Paper-hunting season took'place on Saturday, in the form of a handicap, ran between two points off the Sicaway Road, commencing near the Hermitage and finishing near the Bubbling Well. The paper having been laid the previous afternoon, most ardent sportsmen had surveyed the ground, and '"totted up" the amount of nerve and muscle needed to go through it. Evidently the stock of both was equal to the occasion, for over thirty ponies were brought to the start, and were let go with the time allowances advertised. The course diverged to the west, and was over excellent racing and jumping ground, and the pace was as swift as the best ponies could make it, The jumps were none of them serious enough to check for more than a few moments the headlong rush of the field, but an occasional spill resulted from a false rise to a leap or a stumble in the soft broken ground. Having got away about 20 minutes past three, the hunt renppeared in some 22 minutes, with almost startling suddenness, at the finish, Mr. Symons on Southdown leading at hi; speed, hard followed by Mr. Jenkins on Serenader, and Mr. R. H. Gore-Booth on Misfortune. The closences with which most of the hunt came in, proved that had been carefully laid and that dicapping was judicious; yet the and second started at scratch, and the third with a time allowance of oniy'h Wo ought to remark that th the previous hunt was finally awarded to Mr. I. O. Carleton.
A tolerably wide bit of creek, with very soft shelving banks, afforded plenty of excitement and some amusement to spectators—who were out in the usual force—by the vain struggles of riders to got their ponies over, thoroughly used up as thi majority of them were by the pa coat which they had been urged. Some jumped boldly enough, only to find their ponies go down by the stern in the treacherous margin of the creek, while the fore part of the animal was making wild but ineffectual struggles to extricate the sunken portion, To adopt the lan of that real Rumun Romulus, on the pressing questions of Temperance and Chamber Music young man and a paper hunter, and knowed a young man as was a hors
jumped his pony in at a worry ay! place, so that they was both nearly drow before they gets out, on the wrong side. And what does that young man do then Why, he done it again! Which was a noble example of Temperance and taking to water. There were in fact several young men whose perseverance in that way was only equalled by the perverseness of their ponies. Smashes among vehicles on the road were exceptionally numerous: taw four finished off in the most artistic manner. We knowed another young man what was a-driving a pony and trap, which the pony it wanted to go to Sicaway, but the young man to Bubbling Well. "And that young man got his pony to turn round, and then he licked it till it kicked playfully. And what does that young man do then?—Why, he done it again And what does that there pony do then?—Why, it done it again, too! Anda beautiful selection of chamber music, consisting of an equine sole-oh, "the Devil's Tatoo," on the instruments of percussion, was straightway introduced to a limited but appredative assembly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.