CHAPTER LIV 



OLD JOE 



I was surprised to read some time since that 

 if " Old Joe," who went to hunt Colonel Salkeld's 

 hounds at Holm Hill in 1842, had a surname it 

 was unknown. Why, every man who has followed 

 hound and horn in Cumberland and Dumfriesshire 

 in the forties and fifties, or who knows anything 

 of the steeplechasing which took place in those 

 sporting counties long before the days of the 

 National Hunt Committee, can tell yarns about old 

 joe Graham, of Newtown, and relate incidents of his 

 eventful life. For it was an eventful life, and there 

 are few men who commenced their career in the 

 velveteen jacket of a gamekeeper who have risen to 

 the dignity of the scarlet uniform of the huntsman 

 and the silk jacket of the jockey. Yet such 

 was the case with Joe Graham, whose first place 

 was as under keeper to Lord Galloway, under 

 the well-known Bob Co wen. Graham did not 

 stop long in his situation, and he next went to 

 Mr. Hassell, of Dalemain, near Penrith, who 

 then hunted what were known as the Inglewood 

 Hounds. When Mr. Hassell died Major Colomb 

 carried on the country, with Joe as whipper-in, 

 and when Major Colomb died Mr. James Parkin 



