King Pippin had long been difficult to manage, and dangerous to go near; but on the occasion in question, he could not be got to run at all: nobody could put the bridle on his head. There was a large concourse of people assembled on the Curragh; and one countryman, more fearless than the rest of the lookers on, volunteered his services to bridle the horse. No sooner had he commenced operations, than King Pippin seized him somewhere about the shoulders, and shook him as a dog does a rat. Fortunately for the poor fellow his body was very thickly covered with clothes, for on such holiday occasions an Irishman of his class is fond of displaying his wardrobe, and if he has three coats in the world, he is sure to put them all on. Owing to this circumstance, the horse never fairly got hold of his skin, and the man escaped with little injury, except the rent and ruined condition of his holiday attire. [Illustration: A VICIOUS RACEHORSE.] The WHISPERER was now sent for. This mysterious horse-tamer soon arrived, was shut up with the horse all night, and in the morning exhibited the hitherto ferocious animal following him about the course like a dog—lying down at his command—suffering his mouth to be opened, and any person’s hand to be introduced into it—in short, as quiet almost as a sheep. He came out the same meeting and won his race, and his docility continued satisfactory for a considerable period; but at the end of three years his vice returned, and then he is said to have killed a man, for which he was destroyed. The man who effected the wonder we have just recounted was an awkward, ignorant rustic of the lowest class, of the name of Sullivan, but better known by the appellation of the Whisperer. His occupation was horse-breaking. The nickname he acquired from the vulgar notion of his being able to communicate to the animal what he wished by means of a whisper; and the singularity of his method seemed in some degree to justify the supposition. How his art was acquired, or in what it consisted, he never disclosed. He died about 1810. His son, who followed him in the same trade, possessed but a small portion of the art, having either never learned the true secret, or being incapable of putting it into practice. The wonder of his skill consisted in the celerity of the operation, which was performed in privacy, without any apparent means of coercion: every description of horse or even mule, whether previously broken or unhandled, whatever their peculiar habits or vices might have been, submitted without a show of resistance to his magical influence, and in the short space of an hour became gentle and tractable. This effect, though instantaneously produced, was generally durable. Though more submissive to him than to others, the animals seemed to have acquired a docility unknown before.