The Merry Past 



child every year. Mr. Macarthy was very healthy ; 

 no cold affected him ; and he could not bear the 

 warmth of a shirt in the night time, but put it 

 under his pillow for the last seventy years. In com- 

 pany he drank plentifully of rum and brandy, which 

 he called "naked truth," and when, out of com- 

 plaisance to other gentlemen, he took claret or port, 

 he always drank an equal glass of rum or brandy to 

 qualify those liquors ; this he called a wedge. He 

 used to walk eight or ten miles in a winter's morning, 

 with greyhounds and finders, and seldom failed to 

 bring home a brace of hares. 



The class of whom Squire Western was the type, 

 lingered in Ireland long after it had disappeared in 

 this country. 



As late as the beginning of Queen Victoria's 

 reign there existed in Ireland men who, from the 

 rising up of the sun until the going down of the same, 

 thought of nothing beneath heaven save field sports 

 and whisky ! With frames naturally iron, and be- 

 come as steel by the constant practice of every hardy, 

 invigorating exercise, such men could perform almost 

 inconceivable feats of physical endurance, and drink 

 a stupendous quantity of liquor. Most daring horse- 

 men, and imbued with the devil-may-care spirit 

 characteristic of their race, they made it a point of 

 honour to attempt the most impossible leaps when 

 out with hounds. 



In those days an Irish hunt was the noisiest, most 

 rattling, merry, break-neck scene imaginable. The 

 gentlemen sportsmen of the country were well mounted 



55 



