DAN SULLIVAN, THE WHISPERER. 9 



The one class relied and relies on personal influence 

 over lower animals. They terrify, subdue, or conciliate 

 by eye, voice, and touch, just as some wicked w^omen. 

 not endowed with any extraordinary external charms, 

 bewitch and betray the wisest men. 



The other class rely on the infliction of acute pain, or, 

 stupefaction by drugs, or other similar expedients for 

 acquiring a temporary ascendancy. 



In a work printed in 1604, quoted by Nolan, we have 

 a melancholy account of the fate of an ingenious horse- 

 tamer. "'A Neapolitan, called Pietro, had a little horse, 

 named Mauroco, doubtless a Barb or Arab, which he had 

 taught to perform many tricks. He would, at a sign 

 from his master, lie down, kneel, and make as many 

 courvettes (springs on his hind-legs forward, like rear- 

 ing), as his master told him. He jumped over a stick, 

 and through hoops, carried a glove to the person Pietro 

 pointed out, and performed a thousand pretty antics. 

 He travelled through the greater part of the Continent, 

 but unfortunately passing through Aries, the people in 

 that '• age of faith,' took him for a sorcerer, and burned 

 him and poor Mauroco in the market-place." It was pro- 

 bably from this incident that Victor Hugo took the 

 catastrophe of La Esmeralda and her goat. 



Dan Sullivan, who flourished about fifty years ago, 

 was the greatest horse-tamer of whom there is any record 

 in modern times. His triumph commenced by his pur- 

 chasing for an old song a dragoon's horse at Mallow, who 

 was so savage " that he was obliged to be fed through a 

 hole in the wall." After one of Sullivan's lessons the 

 trooper drew a car quietly through Mallow, and remained 

 a very proverb of gentleness for years after. In fact, with 

 mule or horse, one half-hour s lesson from Sullivan was 

 enough ; but they relapsed in other hands. Sullivan's 



