John Leech and other papers

The D hike of At hole. 375
There may be better pursuits for a man and a
duke than otter-hunting, and crawling like a huge
caterpillar for hours across bogs and rocks after a
royal stag; but there may be worse; and it is no
small public good to keep up the relish for and the
exercise of courage, perseverance, readiness of mind
and resource, hardihood, — it is an antidote against
the softness and the luxury of a dainty world.
But he was not only a great hunter, and an
organiser and vitaliser of hunting, he was a great
breeder. He lived at home, was himself a farmer,
and knew all his farmers and all their men ; had lain
out at night on the Badenoch heights with them, and
sat in their bothies and smoked with them the
familiar pipe. But he also was, as we have said, a
thorough breeder, especially of Ayrshire cattle. It
was quite touching to see this fierce, restless, intense
man — impiger, acer, iracundus — at the great Battersea
show doating upon and doing everything for his
meek-eyed, fine-limbed, sweet-breathed kine. It was
the same with other stock, though the Ayrshires were
his pets to the end.
Then he revived and kept up the games of the
country, — the throwing the hammer, and casting the
mighty caber; 1 the wild, almost naked, hillrace ; the
Ghillie-Callum (sword dance) and the study of the
eldritch, melancholy pipes, to which, we think, distance
1 A huge tree, requiring great strength and knack to pitch it.