at all evints, close blood relations.  Tim was then pronounced to be the best scholar in Ireland except the Prowost; though among ourselves, they might have thought of the man that taught him.  That, however, wasn’t all.  A young lady fell in love wid Tim, and is to make him a present of herself and her great fortune (three estates) the moment he becomes a counsellor; and in the meantime she allows him thirty pounds a year to bear his expenses, and live like a gintleman.

“Now to return to the youth in the corner:  Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, Jemmy keep your money, or give it to the priest to keep, and it will be safest; but by no means let the Hyblean honey of the schoolmaster’s blarney deprive you of it, otherwise it will be a vale, vale, longum vale between you. Crede experto!”

“Masther,” said the farmer, “many a sthrange accident you met wid on yer thravels through Munsther?”

“No doubt of that, Mr. Lanigan.  I and another boy thravelled it in society together.  One day we were walking towards a gintleman’s house on the road side, and it happened that we met the owner of it in the vicinity, although we didn’t know him to be such.

“‘Salvete Domini!’ said he, in good fresh Latin.

“‘Tu sis salvus, quoque!’ said I to him, for my comrade wasn’t cute, an’ I was always orathor.

“‘Unde veniti?’ said he, comin’ over us wid another deep piece of larnin’ the construction of which was, ‘where do yez come from?’

“I replied, ’Per varios casus et tot discrimina rerum, venimus a Mayo.’

“‘Good!’ said he, ‘you’re bright; follow me.’

“So he brought us over to his own house, and ordered us bread and cheese and a posset; for it was Friday, an’ we couldn’t touch mate.  He, in the mane time, sat an chatted along wid us.  The thievin’ cook, however, in makin’ the posset, kept the curds to herself, except a slight taste here and there, that floated on the top; but she was liberal enough of the whey, any how.

“Now I had been well trained to fishing in my more youthful days; and no gorsoon could grope a trout wid me.  I accordingly sent the spoon through the pond before me wid the skill of a connoisseur; but to no purpose—­it came up wid nothin’ but the whey.

“So, said I off hand to the gintleman, houlding up the bowl, and looking at it with a disappointed face,

‘Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.’

‘This,’ says I, ’plase your hospitality, may be Paotolus, but the divil a taste o’ the proper sand is in the bottom of it.’

“The wit of this, you see, pleased him, and we got an excellent treat in his studium, or study:  for he was determined to give myself another trial.

“‘What’s the wickedest line in Virgil?’ said he.

“Now I had Virgil at my fingers’ ends, so I answered him: 

‘Flectere si nequeo superos, Aeheronta movebo,’