INTRODUCTION.
In preparing this work for the press, I may state that it is composed chiefly of a series of papers on horses and their riders, which appeared a short time since in the columns of The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. How they originally came to be written and published may not prove uninteresting.
One day, in the middle of February 1880, a goodly company, comprising many thousands of persons, assembled upon the lawn of a nobleman's residence in the vicinity of Dublin; ostensibly for the purpose of hunting, but in reality to gaze at and chronicle the doings of a very distinguished foreign lady, who had lately come to our shores. I was there, of course; and whilst we waited for the Imperial party, I amused myself by watching the moving panorama, and taking notes of costume and effect. Everybody who could procure anything upon which to ride, from a racehorse to a donkey, was there that day, and vehicles of all descriptions blocked up every available inch of the lordly avenues and well-kept carriage-drives.
There is for me so great an attraction in a number of "ladies on horseback" that I looked at them, and at them alone. One sees gentlemen riders every hour in the day, but ladies comparatively seldom; every hunting morning finds about a hundred and fifty mounted males ready for the start, and only on an average about six mounted females, of whom probably not more than the half will ride to hounds. This being the case, I always look most particularly at that which is the greater novelty, nor am I by any means singular in doing so.
