THE WARD UNION HOUNDS. I03 



years kept a pack of harriers for the gratuitous 

 amusement of his grateful neighbours. Close 

 behind him is a very characteristic portrait of Mr. 

 Thomas Harper, and but that he has become in 

 his long residence amongst us, like our early Norman 

 conquerors, more Irish than the Irish themselves, I 

 should be disposed to treat him with the courtesy we 

 should ever extend to visitors. The recollections of 

 his many splendid victories between the flags in this 

 tight little island, have obliterated those earlier and 

 very frequent triumphs when Mr. Harper was wont, 

 in succession to his fath er, to sweep the Border race- 

 courses of their prizes in true "Reiver" fashion. 

 Mr. Harper's father was of the school which gave to 

 Scotland such sportsmen as Ramsay of Barnton, 

 Lord Eglington, Sir Joseph Boswell, Lord Glasgow, 

 and Mr. Meiklam : they raced for stakes without 

 considering the *' Ledger." Mr. T. Harper, the 

 youngest of a sporting family, commenced in 

 his twelfth year a career of, till quite lately, 

 unvaried success by scoring the Roxboroshire 

 Border Plate at Hawick, where, for many years, as 

 at other Border meetings, all the best things fell to 

 his share. 



Such well-known faces as Mr. J. Hone, Mr. Turbett, 

 and Mr. Jameson are easily recognised. No better 

 supporters of Stag-hunting are to be found ; and 

 there is no one who goes straighter than Mr. Hone, 

 though Mr. Coppinger, and Mr. W. A. Maher, his 

 neighbours, on the canvass, are rivals in the field 

 not unworthy of him, or any "flyer" of the hunt, 

 here or elsewhere. Mr. Drury, Mr. William 

 Fitzgerald, and Mr. James Kelly, all good men 



