“Considering everything, 176 behaved very well; he did n't plunge, and he did n't kick, and my grandfather said, 'Providence was kind enough not to let him rear!' but somehow he wouldn't go straight but sideways, and kept lashing his long tail on my grandfather's legs and sometimes round his body, in a way that terrified him greatly, till he became used to it. “'Well, if riding be a pleasure,' says my grandfather, 'people must be made different from me.' “For, saving your favor, ma'am, he was as raw as a griskin, and there was n't a bit of him the size of a half-crown he could sit on without a cry-out; and no other pace would the beast go but this little jig-jig, from side to side, while he was tossing his head and flinging his mane about, just as if to say, 'Could n't I pitch you sky-high if I liked? Could n't I make a Congreve-rocket of you, Dodd and Dempsey?' “When he got on the 'Fifteen Acres,' it was only the position he found himself in that destroyed the grandeur of the scene; for there were fifty thousand people assembled at least, and there was a line of infantry of two miles long, and the artillery was drawn up at one end, and the cavalry stood beyond them, stretching away towards Knockmaroon. “My grandfather was now getting accustomed to his sufferings, and he felt that, if 176 did no more, with God's help he could bear it for one day; and so he rode on quietly outside the crowd, attracting, of course, a fair share of observation, for he wasn't always in the saddle, but sometimes a little behind or before it. Well, at last there came a cloud of dust, rising at the far end of the field, and it got thicker and thicker, and then it broke, and there were white plumes dancing, and gold glittering, and horses all shaking their gorgeous trappings, for it was the staff was galloping up, and then there burst out a great cheer, so loud that nothing seemed possible to be louder, until bang--bang--bang, eighteen large guns went thundering together, and the whole line of infantry let off a clattering volley, till you 'd think the earth was crashing open. “'Devil's luck to ye all! couldn't you be quiet a little longer?' says D. and D., for he was trying to get an easy posture to sit in; but just at this moment 176 pricked up his ears, made three bounds in the air, as if something lifted him up, shook his head like a fish, and away he went: wasn't it wonderful that my grandfather kept his seat? He remembers, he says, that at each bound he was a yard over his back; but as he was a heavy man, and kept his legs open, he had the luck to come down in the same place, and a sore place it must have been! for he let a screech out of him each time that would have pierced the heart of a stone. He knew very little more what happened, except that he was galloping away somewhere, until at last he found himself in a crowd of people, half dead with fatigue and fright, and the horse thick with foam. “'Where am I?' says my grandfather.