A near relative of my own gets his club cronies to play bridge with his son, aged eighteen, and pays his losses, in order that he may be thoroughly grounded in the game.  The lad is a capital boy, and all the better for his early association with elder men on their own level.

One of the resources of my old age is three games of picquet every night after dinner with my wife, and very much I enjoy them.  There is often the fashionable bridge played in the room by my children and their friends, but I have never taken a hand, though in younger days I derived a fair amount of diversion from whist.

CHAPTER IV

FARMING

My years of schooling having come to an end, I was back in Ireland in full enjoyment of youth, high spirits, and thoughtless carelessness.  These holiday times were delightful.  I could be in the saddle all day if I liked, was free to shoot or bathe as I pleased, had dogs at my disposal, could pass the time of day with all sorts and conditions of men—­a thing which I have relished all my life—­and in fact led the gay existence of the younger offshoot of an Irish squire.

In those days things were not so impecunious in Ireland as they subsequently became, but there was always a vivacious Hibernian scorn for false pretension, and a determination to have the best possible time, such as you can read in Lever’s novels of old, and the capital tales of those two clever ladies, Miss Martin and Miss Somerville, to-day.

It is perfectly true that there are many Irish landlords in sporting counties who cannot have three hundred a year, and yet all their sons and daughters manage to hunt four days a week.

This would be impossible out of Ireland, and is absolutely incomprehensible even there; but the fact remains that it is done, and all one can remark is to echo the patter of the conjuror:—­

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’

I, however, was not destined to be left a derelict at home, as falls to the hapless lot of far too many good fellows in Ireland.

There were a good many family counsels, and the authorities could not make up their minds what to do with me.  However, I thought farming was the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession—­an idea hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble of racking their brains about me.

Personally, I have often regretted that what in modern phrase may be called the ‘Stevenson boom’ did not coincide with my search for a career.  Big posts were in due time going for engineers; and those young men who had the stamp of apprenticeship to, or association with, the great man could get almost anything in the days of the fever for railway construction.

Even later than the period I am now recalling, the journey from Dublin to Dingle would take more than two days, and, so far as I can recollect, it certainly took five from Dingle to London.  Those coaching journeys were terrible experiences in wet weather, for you were drenched outside and suffocated inside, whilst you paid more than three times the present railway fare for the miserable privilege of this uncomfortable means of transit.