“Well, now, what color is white, Phadrick?”

“Why, it’s a snow-color:  for all the world the color of snow.”

“White is?”

“Ay, is it.”

“The dear help your head, Phadrick, if that’s all you know about snow.  In England, man, snow is an Oxford gray, an’ in Scotland, a pepper an’ salt, an’ sometimes a cut-beard, when they get a hard winther.  I found that much in the Greek, any way, Phadrick.  Thry agin, you imigrant, I’ll give you another chance—­what color is white?”

“Why, thin, it’s—­white—­an’ nothin’ else.  The sorra one but you’d puzzle a saint wid your long-headed screwtations from books.”

“So, Phadrick, your preamble is, that white is white, an’ black is black?”

“Asy avick.  I said, sure enough, that white is white; but the black I deny—­I said it was the color of Father Curtis’s black coat.”

“Oh, you barbarian of the world, how I scorn your profundity an’ emotions!  You’re a disgrace to the human sex by your superciliousness of knowledge, an’ your various quotations of ignorance.  Ignorantia, Phadrick, is your date an’ superscription.  Now, stretch out your ears, till I probate, or probe to you the differ atween black an’ white.”

“Phadrick!!” said the father.

“I’m listenin’.”

“Now, Phadrick, here’s the griddle, an’ here’s a clane plate.  Do you see them here beside one another?”

“I’m lookin’ at them.”

“Now, shut your eyes.”

“Is that your way, Denis, of judgin’ colors?”

“Shut your eyes, I say, till I give you ocular demonstration of the differ atween these two respectable colors.”

“Well, they’re shut.”

“An’ keep them so.  Now, what differ do you see atween them?”

“The sorra taste, man alive; I never seen anything in my whole life so clearly of a color as they are both this minute.”

“Don’t you see now, Phadrick, that there’s not the smallest taste o’ differ in them, an’ that’s accordin’ to Euclid.”

“Sure enough, I see the divil a taste o’ differ atween the two.”

“Well, Phadrick, that’s the point settled.  There’s no discrimination at all atween black an’ white.  They’re both of the same color—­so long as you keep your eyes shut.”

“But if a man happens to open his eyes, Dinny?”

“He has no right to open them, Phadrick, if he wants to prove the truth of a thing.  I should have said probe—­but it does not significate.”

“The heavens mark you to grace, Dinny.  You did that in brave style.  Phadrick, ahagur, he’ll make the darlin’ of an arguer whin he gets the robes an him.”

“I don’t deny that; he’ll be aquil to the best o’ thim:  still, Denis, I’d rather, whin I want to pronounce upon colors, that he’d let me keep my eyes open.”

“Ay, but he did it out o’ the books, man alive; an’ there’s no goin’ beyant thim.  Sure he could prove it out of the Divinity, if you went to that.  An’ what is still more, he could, by shuttin’ your eyes, in the same way prove black to be white, an’ white black, jist as asy.”