“I solemnly supplicate upwards of fifty pardons,” said Mat; “bad manners to it for a stool! but, your honor, it was my own detect of speculation, bekase, you see, it’s minus a leg—­a circumstance of which you waren’t wi a proper capacity to take cognation, its not being personally acquainted with it.  I humbly supplicate upwards of fifty pardons.”

The Englishman was now nettled, and determined to wreak his ill-temper on Mat, by turning him and his establishment into ridicule.

“Isn’t this, Mister ------ I forget your name, sir.”

“Mat Kavanagh, at your sarvice.”

“Very well, my learned friend, Mr. Mat Kevanagh, isn’t this precisely what is called a hedge-school?”

“A hedge-school!” replied Mat, highly offended; “my seminary a hedge-school!  No, sir; I scorn the cognomen in toto.  This, sir, is a Classical and Mathematical Seminary, under the personal superintendence of your humble servant.”

“Sir,” replied the other master, who till then was silent, wishing, perhaps, to sack Mat in presence of the gentlemen, “it is a hedge-school; and he is no scholar, but an ignoramus, whom I’d sack in three minutes, that would be ashamed of a hedge-school.”

“Ay,” says Mat, changing his tone, and taking the cue from his friend, whose learning he dreaded, “it’s just for argument’s sake, a hedge-school; and, what is more, I scorn to be ashamed of it.”

“And do you not teach occasionally under the hedge behind the house here?”

“Granted,” replied Mat; “and now where’s your vis consequentiae?”

“Yes,” subjoined the other, “produce your vis consequentiae; but any one may know by a glance that the divil a much of it’s about you.”

The Englishman himself was rather at a loss for the vis consequentiae, and replied, “Why don’t you live, and learn, and teach like civilized beings, and not assemble like wild asses—­pardon me, my friend, for the simile—­at least like wild colts, in such clusters behind the ditches?”

“A clusther of wild coults!” said Mat; “that shows what you are; no man of classical larnin’ would use such a word.  If you had stuck at the asses, we know it’s a subject you’re at home in—­ha! ha! ha!—­but you brought the joke on yourself, your honor—­that is, if it is a joke—­ha! ha! ha!”

“Permit me, sir,” replied the strange master, “to ax your honor one question—­did you receive a classical education?  Are you college-bred?”

“Yes,” replied the Englishman; “I can reply to both in the affirmative.  I’m a Cantabrigian.”

“You are a what?” asked Mat.

“I am a Cantabrigian.”

“Come, sir, you must explain yourself, if you plase.  I’ll take my oath that’s neither a classical nor a mathematical tarm.”

The gentleman smiled.  “I was educated in the English College of Cambridge.”

“Well,” says Mat, “and may be you would be as well off if you had picked up your larnin’ in our own Thrinity; there’s good picking in Thrinity, for gentlemen like you, that are sober, and harmless about the brains, in regard of not being overly bright.”