The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent

'Ma new breeks are made out of the winter curtains.'

An incident connected with one of the earliest private carriages in Kerry is worth telling. The vehicle in question had just been purchased by a certain Miss Mullins, daughter of a former Lord Ventry, who regarded it on its arrival with almost sacred awe. A dance in the neighbourhood seemed an appropriate opportunity for impressing the county with her newly acquired grandeur, but the night proving wet, she insisted on reverting to a former mode of progression, and rode pillion behind her coachman.

The result was that she caught a violent chill, which turned to pneumonia, and as her relatives were assembled round her deathbed, the old lady exclaimed, between her last gasps for breath:--

'Thank God I never took out the carriage that wet night.'

CHAPTER II

PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS

My father, Peter Bodkin Hussey, was for a long time a barrister at the Irish Bar, practising in the Four Courts, whe