you all have homes—­but he has none!  Thrust back by every hard-hearted spalpeen, and he, maybe, a better father’s son than the Turk that refuses him!  Look at your own childre, my friends!  Bring the case home to yourselves!  Suppose he was one of them—­alone on the earth, and none to pity him in his sorrows!  Your own childre, I say, in a strange land.—­[Here the outcry became astounding; men, women, and children in one general uproar of grief.]—­An’—­this may all be Jemmy M’Evoy’s case, that’s going in a week or two to Munster, as a poor scholar—­may be his case, I say, except you befriend him, and show your dacency and your feelings, like Christians and Catholics; and for either dacency or kindness, I’d turn yez against any other congregation in the diocess, or in the kingdom—­ay, or against Dublin, itself, if it was convanient, or in the neighborhood.”

Now here was a coup de main—­not a syllable mentioned about Jemmy M’Evoy, until he had melted them down, ready for the impression, which he accordingly made to his heart’s content.

“Ay,” he went on, “an’ ’tis the parish of Ballysogarth that has the name, far and near, for both, and well they desarve it.  You won’t see the poor gossoon go to a sthrange country—­with empty pockets.  He’s the son of an honest man—­one of yourselves; and although he’s a poor man, you know ’twas Yallow Sam that made him so—­that put him out of his comfortable farm and slipped a black-mouth * into it.  You won’t turn your backs on the son in regard of that, any way.  As for Sam, let him pass; he’ll not grind the poor, nor truckle to the rich, when he gives up his stewardship in the kingdom come.  Lave him to the friend of the poor—­to his God; but the son of them that he oppressed, you will stand up for.  He’s going to Munster, to learn ‘to go upon the Mission:’  and, on Sunday next, there will be a collection made here, and at the other two althars for him; and, as your own characters are at stake, I trust it will be neither mane nor shabby.  There will be Protestants here, I’ll engage, and you must act dacently before them, if it was only to set them a good example.  And now I’ll tell yez a story that the mintion of the Protestants brings to my mind:—­

     * In the North of Ireland the word black-mouth means a
     Presbyterian.

“There was, you see, a Protestant man and a Catholic woman once married together.  The man was a swearing, drinking, wicked rascal, and his wife the same:  between them they were a blessed pair to be sure.  She never bent her knee under a priest until she was on her death-bed; nor was he known ever to enter a church door, or to give a shilling in charity but once, that being—­as follows:—­He was passing a Catholic place of worship one Sunday, on his way to fowl—­for he had his dog and gun with him;—­’twas beside a road, and many of the congregration were kneeling out across the way.  Just as he passed they were making a collection for a poor scholar—­and surely