V
At Durham, which was my next excursion from York, I cannot claim,
therefore, that my mission was more serious because it almost
solely concerned the Church, or that it was more frivolous at
Doncaster, where it almost solely concerned the Turf. My train
started in a fine mist that turned to sun, but not before it had
shown me with the local color, which a gray light lends
everything, a pack of hounds crossing a field near the track with
two huntsmen at their heels. They were not chasing, but running
leisurely, and with their flower-like, loose spread over the
green, and the pink-coated hunters on their brown mounts, they
afforded a picture as vivid and of as perfect semblance to all my
visions of fox-hunting as I could have asked. I had been hoping
that I might see something of the famous sport, almost as English
as the Church or the Turf, and there, suddenly and all
unexpectedly, the sight fully and satisfyingly was. Now, indeed,
I felt that my impression of English society was complete, and
that I might go home and write novels of English high life, and
do something to redeem myself a little from the disgrace I had
fallen into with my fellow-plebeians by always writing of common
Americans, like themselves, and never _grandes dames_ or
ideal persons, or people in the best society.
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