the whim took them. Kent was not wanting
from the list, and we remember a coachman
who had been quite mastered by his horses,
putting his trust in a professed whisperer.
After his ghostly counsel, the horses had the
worst of it for two mouths, when their ill-humour
returned, and the coachman himself
immediately darkened his stable, and held
what he termed a little conversation with
them, which kept them placid till two more
moons had waned. He did not seem altogether
to approve of the system, and plainly
confessed that it was cruel.

No horse-taming systems, however, have so
much antiquity in their favour as that of
Dan Sullivan the Irish whisperer, who died
nearly half a century ago. His greatest
triumph was his purchase for an old song
of a dragoon's horse in Mallow, who had kept
such a savage watch and ward over the door
of his loose-box, that he was obliged to be fed
through a hole in the wall. After one lesson
the trooper drew a car quite contentedly
through Mallow, and remained a very proverb
of gentleness for years after. In fact, be it
mule or be it a horse, one half-hour's lesson
was invariably enough. Sullivan's own
account of the secret was, that he originally
acquired it from a wearied soldier who
bought a pint of porter between Mallow and
Cork and had not twopence to pay for it. The
landlord was retaining part of his kit as a
pledge, when Sullivan, who sat in the bar,
vowed that he "would never see a hungry
man want," and gave him so good a luncheon,
that in his gratitude he drew him aside at
parting and revealed, what he believed to be
an Indian charm.

Sullivan was content without pupils, and
so jealous of his new gift, that even the
priest of Ballyclough could not wring it from
him at the confessional. His son used to
boast how his baffled Riverence met his sire
as they both rode towards Mallow, and
charged him with being a confederate of the
wicked one, and how the whisperer laid his
horse under a spell, forthwith, and led him a
weary chace among the cross roads, till he
promised, in despair, to let him alone for
ever.

He left three sons, one of whom practised
the secret till his death, with partial
success; but neither of the others pretended
to any knowledge of it. One of them
breaks horses in Mallow to this day. In fact,
the race of whisperers seemed at an end until
Mr. Rarey's fame roused a grandson into
action; and although it is contrary to the old
family code, the secret is said to be forthcoming,
if, under Lord Waterford's auspices, his
pupil-list fills.

Circus-training has always had the idea of
cruelty connected with it. A Spanish
horse, in the early part of the century,
was one of its highest triumphs, and he
was taught, by a code of signals, more or less
connected with the whip—some of them
managed by a crack with the thumb-nail—to
indicate the number of pips on a card.
This animal, having been sold, found its way
into an errand cart, and, having worked in it
for seven years, gave one more proof of the
extraordinary strength of equine memory. He
was accidentally seen by a successor of Jacob
Astley (to whom he once belonged), was
bought, re-introduced to the ring, and went
through all his old tricks as accurately as if
he had never, during his seven years'
absence, ceased to perform them. Severe
systems, as well as those of l'Haute Ecole,
have had but very few charms for the real
lovers of horses, who dislike to see them
made tricky, or dead-slow by going round
and round in the deep saw-dust of the
ring. Hence, the circus system was wholly
ignored by the public, and until Mr Rarey
appeared, horses that seemed hopelessly vicious,
were shot or heavily muzzled to prevent
further mischief. In fact, such incredulity
prevailed as to the chances of a confirmed
savage being cured, that if Cruiser and Stafford
had not presented themselves as subjects,
popular belief in Mr. Rarey would have been
much more coy. Cruiser, as might have been
expected from a horse who had eaten and
drunk through the helmet barred for nearly
three years, "could do more fighting in less
time" than any horse of the day; and when
the blood rushed to his brain, on being first
fastened to the rack, his rage fairly towered
into frenzy. There is, however, as his neat
tapering head indicates, no lack of kindly
intelligence about him. Stafford has much
less breeding, and is a large coffin-headed
horse, with, it is thought, an affection of the
brain, which prevents his receiving a very
permanent impression for good. Two grooms
led him into the riding-school at Paris in a
cavecon, and darting at him with pen-knives,
removed it piecemeal, and then left Mr.
Rarey to his tender mercies.

Among the brilliant band of horsemen,
who have seen and watched Mr. Rarey, there
is no dissenting voice as to the fact of his
being unrivalled in his knack of
approaching and handling a horse; and his
nerve, as he creeps in and out among the
hind-legs of a subject who, at the beginning
of a lesson, had been publicly warranted by
her owner, to have kicked at least two
four-wheels to pieces, or to have made a
vow that it should never be cleaned
down, astonished even the Irishmen. Long
practice has enabled him at such critical
moments to tell from the sudden tension of
the muscles how the horse is inclined to act,
and just to get out of the range of a kick;
one of which from a grey colt of Mr.
Gurney's very nearly made an end of him. The
hoof glanced within an inch of his breast;
and, while the audience gave a sympathetic
shudder, his colour never came or went. We
have never seen him partly beaten or seem
to lose temper, but that once, and then his