WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



solemn performance of recording the day just passed, 

 if it was one for recording, and the owner of this 

 extraordinary volume carried it to his standing desk, and 

 pulled himself together with the portentously solemn 

 expression that his humorous face always assumed 

 when any writing had to be done. Then there was 

 a brief silence, and the pen scratched away probably 

 something like this, as it was generally shooting in those 

 later days : — ' Ballyragget bog and Dromanore. Self 



and B . Dogs, Dash and Nell — 16 partridges, 



6 snipe, I hare, 2 grouse, 2 golden plover, 2 wood 

 pigeons, i ptarmigan.' The last item, I may set down 

 with a blush, was the local for pheasant, which when 

 met with wild on the bog edge or mountain was not 

 treated with ceremony after 20th September, even 

 by a J.P., for excellent reasons not relevant here. 

 And it must be remembered this was Ireland, not 

 Norfolk. When the book was closed, and its owner 

 in his grave under the Slieve Bloom mountains, it 

 was sent to me, together, at my request, with a certain 

 rather wobbly, top-heavy rod, and a time-worn game- 

 bag. The book was returned not long ago, when a 

 certain infant now saiHng the seas in one of His 

 Majesty's battleships reached something like man's 

 estate. The wobbly rod and the tattered game-bag 

 remain with me as cherished relics. For the race 

 has run its course like so many in Ireland, so far as its 

 old abiding place is concerned. Its extremely modest 

 record no longer figures in the latest editions of Burke. 

 The old ivy-clad house peeping down the beech avenue 

 is, I beUeve, replaced or obscured by the vulgar erection 

 of a poHtical patriot who has prospered, like so many 



361 



