672 
ON THE HABITS AND VICES OF HORSES. 
his rider/’ continued my informant, “ he would throw himself down . 
We could do nothing with him; and I was obliged at last to 
sell him to go in a stage coach.” As long as this horse was kept 
to his work, he continued perfectly quiet to ride, and we believed 
him radically cured of his vice; but having been turned out, and 
made fresh, he shewed it again as bad as ever. This, I appre¬ 
hend, will be found upon close observation to be most generally 
the case, whatever may have been the means employed. Jumper, 
like the celebrated whisperer, was supposed to possess some 
magic charm, by which this wonderful effect was produced. By 
the way, I may observe, there appears to have been a great simi¬ 
larity between these two men. And those who recollect Jumper 
will easily recognize the similitude in the following excellent ac¬ 
count of the whisperer, extracted from the Rev. Mr. Townsend’s 
Statistical Survey of the County of Cork, and which I take the 
liberty to introduce here. 
“ James Sullivan, the whisperer, was a horse-breaker at Cork ; 
an ignorant awkward rustic of the lowest class. He gained this 
singular epithet by an extraordinary art of controlling in a secret 
manner, and taming* into the most submissive and tractable dis¬ 
position, any horse or mare that was notoriously vicious and 
obstinate. He practised his skill in private, and without any 
apparent forcible means. In the short space of half an hour, his 
magical influence would bring into perfect submission and good 
temper even a colt that had never been handled; and the effect, 
though instantaneously produced, was generally durable. When 
employed to tame an outrageous animal, he directed the stable, 
in which the object of his experiment was placed, to be shut, 
with orders not to open the door until a signal given. After a 
tete-a-tete between him and the horse, during which little or no 
bustle was heard, the signal was made, and on opening the door 
the horse was found lying down, and the man by his side playing 
familiarly with him like a child with a puppy dog. From that 
time he was found perfectly willing to submit to any discipline 
however repugnant to his nature before. 
“ I once,” says Mr. Townsend, “ saw his skill on a horse, 
which could never before be brought to stand for a smith to 
shoe him. The day after Sullivan’s half-hour lecture, I went, 
not without some incredulity, to the smith’s shop, with many 
other curious spectators, where we were eye witnesses of the 
complete success of his art. This too had been a troop horse, 
and it was supposed, not without reason, that, after regimental 
discipline had failed, no other would be found availing. I ob¬ 
served that the animal seemed afraid whenever Sullivan either 
spoke or looked at him: how that extraordinary ascendancy 
