CONCLUSION, 1874-1913 

 affair from that which Masters like Sir John Ken- 

 nedy and Mr La Touche were able and willing 

 to undertake on a subscription of a few hundreds a 

 year. The perennial difficulty of satisfying the 

 claims on poultry funds by an imaginative people 

 like the Irish does not diminish as time goes on as 

 is shown by a letter received by a Master not long 

 ago from a Roman Catholic clergyman. He en- 

 closed a postal order for ten shillings at the request 

 of a parishioner, a woman whose conscience pricked 

 her because she had claimed and received that sum 

 from the hunt for fowls destroyed by foxes, when, 

 as a fact, she had never had any fowls to lose. Our 

 future historian will have to take account of diffi- 

 cuhies for modern Masters arising from the con- 

 stantly increasing fields of inexperienced riders, 

 and of the growing menace of wire fencing; but he 

 will be able to tell of these and other difficulties 

 successfully overcome and to begin his record 

 with a story of an increasing prosperity enjoyed by 

 the Kildare Hunt during nearly forty years. 



His first pages will be concerned with the success- 

 ful Mastership of Major Edward Mansfield, who 

 took up the management left vacant by Sir Edward 

 Kennedy in 1874 and showed excellent sport for 

 three seasons until Mr William Forbes took the 

 hounds on his retirement and continued as worthily 

 the Kildare tradition of good sport until 1884. 



357 



