and receiving the instantaneous rejoinder, “Then where would your reverence have me wait on you?” A lady of my acquaintance, who is a proprietress in County Galway, is in the habit of receiving her own rents.  One day, when a tenant-farmer had pleaded long and unsuccessfully for an abatement, he exclaimed as he handed over his money, “Well, my lady, all I can say is that if I had my time over again it’s not a tenant-farmer I’d be.  I’d follow one of the learn’d professions.”  The proprietress gently replied that even in the learned professions there were losses as well as gains, and perhaps he would have found professional life as precarious as farming.  “Ah, my lady, how can that be then?” replied the son of St. Patrick.  “If you’re a lawyer—­win or lose, you’re paid.  If you’re a doctor—­kill or cure, you’re paid.  If you’re a priest—­heaven or hell, you’re paid.”  Who can imagine an English farmer pleading the case for an abatement with this happy mixture of fun and satire?

“Urbane” is a word which etymologically bears witness that the ancient world believed the arts of courtesy to be the products of the town rather than of the country.  Something of the same distinction may occasionally be traced even in the civilization of modern England.  The house-surgeon of a London hospital was attending to the injuries of a poor woman whose arm had been severely bitten.  As he was dressing the wound he said, “I cannot make out what sort of animal bit you.  This is too small for a horse’s bite, and too large for a dog’s.”  “O sir,” replied the patient, “it wasn’t an animal; it was another lydy.” Surely the force of Urbanity could no further go.  On the other hand, it was a country clergyman who, in view of the approaching Confirmation, announced that on the morning of the ceremony the young ladies would assemble at the Vicarage and the young women at the National School.

“Let us distinguish,” said the philosopher, and certainly the arbitrary use of the term “lady” and “gentleman” suggests some curious studies in the Art of Putting Things.  A good woman who let furnished apartments in a country town, describing a lodger who had apparently “known better days,” said, “I am positive she was a real born lady, for she hadn’t the least idea how to do hanything for herself; it took her hours to peel her potatoes.”  Carlyle has illustrated from the annals of our criminal jurisprudence the truly British conception of “a very respectable man” as one who keeps a gig; and similarly, I recollect that in the famous trial of Kurr and Benson, the turf-swindlers, twenty years ago, a witness testified, with reference to one of the prisoners, that he had always considered him a “perfect gentleman;” and, being pressed by counsel to give his reasons for this view, said, “He had rooms at the Langham Hotel, and dined with the Lord Mayor.”