MEMOIR OF A GENTLEMAN. 267 



run away with, or meet some unhappy casualty, that one of 

 the parties might be defunct, and the survivor in a place of 

 safety, before he, the justice, appeared upon the battle-ground. 

 Hence, not a week elapsed but my nerves were tortured by the 

 arrival of a shooting -party, and probably further agonized by 

 hearing Mr. Bodkin hallooing to the butler, ' Michael, (sotto 

 voce.) devil speed ye, Michael ! the mistress desires ye to keep 

 back dinner till the gentlemen have done, and to present 

 her compliments, and say, that she expects the company of 

 the survivor.' 



" All this was horrible to me ; in the evening to be sud- 

 denly disturbed with pop ! pop ! and an outcry ; or awakened 

 before daylight by my lady's maid opening the curtains with 

 a curtsey, to know e where the dead men would be stritchedJ 

 It was, moreover, a desperate tax upon my finances ; vaga- 

 bonds, known and unknown, lay for weeks together in my 

 house, while their broken bones were being reunited not a 

 month passed but there was some dying man in the state-room 

 doctors came and went as regularly as the post-boy and 

 once in each quarter the coroner,* if he had any luck, em- 

 panelled a jury in our hall. 



" Nor were we less tormented with the Blazers. We always 

 had a lame horse or two in the stables ; and from the time 

 cub-hunting commenced, till the season ended, of that re- 

 doubted community who hazard 



' Neck and spine, 



Which rural gentlemen call sport divina/ 



we never boasted fewer than a couple on the sick-list. Once, 

 when an inquest was holding in the house, a Blazer in the 

 best bed -room, a dying earth-stopper in the gate-house, and 

 four disabled horses, ' at rack and manger,' I insinuated what 

 a nuisance it was to have one's house made a 'morgue? and 

 the offices an hospital. ' Do, Mr. Dawkins, have done,' ex- 

 claimed my lady ' If you have no humanity, pray conceal it. 

 Believe me, your feelings will never do for Galway' 



" But Drusilla had her reward. What though we kept 

 a lazaretto for lame horses, and a general wakehouse for 

 gentlemen of honour who left the world without sufficient 



* In Connaught this useful officer is paid by the job, and the number 

 ^ith which he occasionally debits the county is surprising. 



