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Updated: May 11, 2025
When the regiment comes stumping through London on its way back to Euston next year, or whenever it's going to be with their ragged pipers leading the way, you would like to be at the head of 'A' Company, Bobby, and I would give something to be exercising my old function of whipper-in. Eh, boy?" "Never mind," said practical Bobby. "Perhaps we shall be on somebody's glittering Staff.
I tip-toed across to the hedge, and, peering over, was relieved of my last doubt: for at the tail of the procession and under charge of one drunken trooper for whipper-in, rode all my poor comrades with arms triced behind them and ankles lamentably looped under their horses' bellies.
In the first place we ought to insist on implicit obedience, not by coaxing, but by the whip, for if a hound wilfully disobeys the person whom he loves as his mother, how much less will he be inclined to obey the orders of a stranger who is his whipper-in?
As to their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old whipper-in of the Meynell-Ingram Hounds: "I bain't a cruel chap, I bain't. But when I puts the lash among the hounds I dew like to hear 'em yowl; I dew like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. For if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em."
As a matter of fact the Whipper-in had not thought of it, but it was easy for him to say what he thought the other wished him to say. "Wal, yes," he replied; "that's jes' what I had been thinkin' of. They've got to come in 'ristocrats or no 'ristocrats! When it comes to a question of bread and meat, pedigree must go to the cellar."
"Hounds have no right to opine," opines the head whipper-in; so clapping spurs into his prad, he begins to pursue the delinquent round the common, with "Markis, Markis! what are you at, Markis? get into cover, Markis!"
When a large landowner, good sportsman and lover of hunting like the late Duke of Rutland, makes an agreement with his tenant-farmers, to walk puppies, the work is certain to be carried out in a give and take manner which will cement good feeling between both parties, and will promote sport; but the practice which obtains in some badly managed hunts of sending a whipper-in to dump down his cartload of puppies on any people who will consent to take them, is not only akin to cadging, but is also productive of many cases of neglect which ought to come before the notice of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Continually this indefatigable whipper-in had to keep them up to their work, and very often had to help out those who had tumbled into ditches and trenches, or stuck fast in hedges. "Well, I do declare we never have had such a run since I came to school," cried Tom, enthusiastically. "Bracebridge deserves a cup, that he does." The sentiment was echoed by all hands, from Lemon downwards.
'Now the clerk was the parson's groom and gardener and jineral manager, and had just got back to his work in the garden when he, too, saw the hunting man pass, and presently saw lots more of 'em, noblemen and gentry, and then he saw the hounds, the huntsman, Jim Treadhedge, the whipper-in, and I don't know who besides.
Nay, not content with being Minister and Ambassador, as well as naval officer, the gallant captain must needs act, at least speculate, as a Secretary of the Treasury, or whipper-in for the Sicilian Commons; so he proceeds to discuss the returns for the new elections: 'Should the small Sicilian force', says he, 'recently landed in Calabria probably under 1,000 men succeed in raising the inhabitants of that part of the country against the present Government, they may be able to beat the 12,000 Neapolitan troops at present in Calabria, and then by getting possession of Scylla and Reggio, the Sicilians will gain the control of the Straits, and ultimately so distress the citadel of Messina, by cutting off its communication, as well as by other military operations, as to bring on its surrender.
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