My brother gave me the choice of a run to the Killeries, or to Killarney.  We could not manage both.  I chose the former, and a most enjoyable trip we had.  He could not leave his work to go with me, but was to join me subsequently, I forget where, in the west.  Meantime he gave me a letter to a bachelor friend of his at Clifden.  This gentleman immediately asked me to dinner, and he and I dined tete-a-tete. Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to apologise for the appearance of a very fine John Dory on the table, saying, that he had been himself to the market to get a turbot for me, but that he had been asked half-a-crown for a not very large one, and really he could not give such absurd prices as that!

Anthony duly joined me as proposed, and we had a grand walk over the mountains above the Killeries.  I don’t forget and never shall forget—­nor did Anthony ever forget; alas! that we shall never more talk over that day again—­the truly grand spectacular changes from dark thick enveloping cloud to brilliant sunshine, suddenly revealing all the mountains and the wonderful colouring of the intertwining sea beneath them, and then back to cloud and mist and drifting sleet again.  It was a glorious walk.  We returned wet to the skin to “Joyce’s Inn,” and dined on roast goose and whisky punch, wrapped in our blankets like Roman senators!

One other scene I must recall.  The reader will hardly believe that it occurred in Ireland.  There was an election of a member for I forget what county or borough, and my brother and I went to the hustings—­the only time I ever was at an election in Her Majesty’s dominions.  What were the party feelings, or the party colours, I utterly forget.  It was merely for the fun of the thing that we went there.  The fun indeed was fast and furious.  The whole scene on the hustings, as well as around them, seemed to me one seething mass of senseless but good-humoured hustling and confusion.  Suddenly in the midst of the uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a confused mass all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were on the huge platform.  Some few were badly hurt.  But my brother and I being young and active, and tolerably stout fellows, soon extricated ourselves, regained our legs, and found that we were none the worse.  Then we began to look to our neighbours.  And the first who came to hand was a priest, a little man, who was lying with two or three fellows on the top of him, horribly frightened and roaring piteously for help.  So Anthony took hold of one of his arms and I of the other, and by main force dragged him from under the superincumbent mass of humanity.  When we got him on his legs his gratitude was unbounded.  “Tell me your names,” he shouted, “that I’ll pray for ye!” We told him laughingly that we were afraid it was no use, for we were heretics.  “Tell me your names,” he shouted again, “that I’ll pray for ye all the more!”