The highest recorded jump, seven feet two inches, was made by the
American horse Filemaker, which I saw ridden in the very front by Mr. H.
L. Herbert, in the hunt at Sagamore Hill, about to be described.
When I was a member of the Meadowbrook hunt, most of the meets were held
within a dozen miles or so of the kennels; at Farmingdale, Woodbury,
Wheatly, Locust Valley, Syosset, or near any one of twenty other queer,
quaint old Long Island hamlets. They were almost always held in the
afternoon, the business men who had come down from the city jogging over
behind the hounds to the appointed place, where they were met by the men
who had ridden over direct from their country-houses. If the meet was
an important one, there might be a crowd of onlookers in every kind of
trap, from a four-in-hand drag to a spider-wheeled buggy drawn by a pair
of long-tailed trotters, the money value of which many times surpassed
that of the two best hunters in the whole field. Now and then a
breakfast would be given the hunt at some country-house, when the whole
day was devoted to the sport; perhaps after wild foxes in the morning,
with a drag in the afternoon.
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