Except Jemmy himself, and one of his brothers who was to accompany him part of the way, none of the family slept.  The mother exhibited deep sorrow, and Dominick, although he made a show of firmness, felt, now that the crisis was at hand, nearly incapable of parting with the boy.  The conversation of their friends and the cheering effects of the poteen, enabled them to sustain his loss better than they otherwise would have done, and the hope of seeing him one day “an ordained priest,” contributed more than either to support them.

When the night was nearly half spent, the mother took a candle and privately withdrew to the room in which the boy slept.  The youth was fair, and interesting to look upon—­the clustering locks of his white forehead were divided; yet there was on his otherwise open brow, a shade of sorrow, produced by the coming separation, which even sleep could not efface.  The mother held the candle gently towards his face, shading it with one hand, lest the light might suddenly awake him; she then surveyed his features long and affectionately, whilst the tears fell in showers from her cheeks.

“There you lie,” she softly sobbed out, in Irish, “the sweet pulse of your mother’s heart; the flower of our flock, the pride of our eyes, and the music of our hearth!  Jimmy, avourneen machree, an’ how can I part wid you, my darlin’ son!  Sure, when I look at your mild face, and think that you’re takin’ the world on your head to rise us out of our poverty, isn’t my heart breakin’!  A lonely house we’ll have afther you, acushla!  Goin’ out and comin’ in, at home or abroad, your voice won’t be in my ears, nor your eye smilin’ upon me.  An’ thin to think of what you may suffer in a sthrange land!  If your head aches, on what tendher breast will it lie? or who will bind the ribbon of comfort * round it? or wipe your fair, mild brow in sickness?  Oh, Blessed Mother!—­hunger, sickness, and sorrow may come upon you when you’ll be far from your own, an’ from them that loves you!”

* The following quotation, taken from a sketch called “The Irish Midwife,” by the author, gives an illustration of this passage:—­“The first, meaning pain in the head, she cures by a very formal and serious process called ‘measuring the head.’  This is done by a ribbon, which she puts round the cranium, repeating during the admeasurement a certain prayer or charm from which the operation is to derive its whole efficacy.  The measuring is performed twice—­in the first instance, to show that its sutures are separated by disease, or to speak more plainly, that the bones of the head are absolutely opened, and that as a natural consequence the head must be much larger than when the patient is in a state of health.  The circumference of the first admeasurement is marked upon a ribbon, after which she repeats the charm that is to remove the headache, and measures the cranium again, in order to show, by a comparison of the two ribbons, that