In this miserable way did he pass over the tedious period of a year, going about every night in rotation with the scholars, and severely beaten on all possible occasions by the master.  His conduct and manners won him:  the love and esteem of all except his tyrant instructor.  His assiduity was remarkable, and his progress in the elements of English and classical literature surprisingly rapid.  This added considerably to his character, and procured him additional respect.  It was not long before he made himself useful and obliging to all the boys beneath his standing in the school.  These services he rendered with an air of such kindness, and a grace so naturally winning, that the attachment of his schoolfellows increased towards him from day to day.  Thady was his patron on all occasions:  neither did the curate neglect him.  The latter was his banker, for the boy had very properly committed his purse to his keeping.  At the expiration of every quarter the schoolmaster received the amount of his bill, which he never failed to send in, when due.

Jemmy had not, during his first year’s residence in the south, forgotten to request the kind curate’s interference with the landlord, on behalf of his father.  To be the instrument of restoring his family to their former comfortable holding under Colonel B------; would have afforded him, without excepting the certainty of his own eventual success, the highest gratification.  Of this, however, there was no hope, and nothing remained for him but assiduity in his studies, and patience under the merciless scourge of his teacher.  In addition to an engaging person and agreeable manners, nature had gifted him with a high order of intellect, and great powers of acquiring knowledge.  The latter he applied to the business before him with indefatigable industry.  The school at; which he settled was considered the first in Munster; and the master, notwithstanding his known severity, stood high, and justly so, in the opinion of the people, as an excellent classical and mathematical scholar.  Jemmy applied himself to the study of both, and at the expiration of his second year had made such progress that he stood without a rival in the school.

It is usual, as we have said, for the poor scholar to go night after night, in rotation, with his schoolfellows; he is particularly welcome in the houses of those farmers whose children are not so far advanced as himself.  It is expected that he should instruct them in the evenings, and enable them, to prepare their lessons for the following day, a task which he always performs with pleasure, because in teaching them he is confirming his own mind in the knowledge which he has previously acquired.  Towards the end of the second year, however, he ceased to circulate in this manner.  Two or three of the most independent parishioners, whose sons were only commencing their studies, agreed to keep him week about; an arrangement highly convenient to him, as by that means he was