THE CURRAGHMORE HOUNDS. 57 



From the way you are questioning me, I have an 

 idea you want to write a book ; but I don't care whether 

 you do or not Every word I tell you is gospel, no 

 man can controvert it. And nothing I have told you, 

 or will tell you of this hunt is truer than what I now 

 tell you of Henry Briscoe. 



Never was a man, taking him ** all round," better 

 qualified for a M. F. H. than he. He knows how 

 to mate his breeding hounds, so that the progeny 

 may reasonably be expected to inherit the good- 

 ness of the parents, while the faults (but he never 

 breeds from a really faulty hound) may be miti- 

 gated or extinguished. When the puppies come 

 in from walk he knows the ones to put forward as 

 well as any man living. In their early kennel train- 

 ing, and horse exercise, he is a disciplinarian. When 

 he first enters them to their game, his keen eye (though 

 he often looks at them through his little stringless 

 glass, with a twist in his dear old head, that we all 

 know so well) selects, without error, the puppies he 

 means to give to his friends. Therefore when the first 

 day of the season arrives, he has his year's entry 

 nearly as steady and free from riot as his old hounds ; 

 and from his long experience and natural sagacity, the 

 condition he has got them into is simply perfect, and 

 that condition, by the most astute kennel management, 

 he keeps up the entire season, no matter how severe it 

 maybe. If he carried the horn himself, as he did for 

 so many years, few gentlemen huntsmen (or profession- 

 als either) could handle a pack of hounds in cover, 

 or through a long run on a cold-scenting day, and at 

 the end account for his fox, better than he. He is a 

 first-rate judge of a horse, as is testified by his being 



