As evening approached, the whiskey brought out the senseless prejudices of parties and factions in a manner quite consonant to the habits of the people.  Those who, in deciding their private quarrels, had in the early part of the day beat and abused each other, now united as the subordinate branches of a greater party, for the purpose of opposing in one general body some other hostile faction.  These fights are usually commenced by a challenge from one party to another, in which a person from the opposite side is simply, and often very good-humoredly, invited to assert, that “black is the white of his enemy’s eye;” or to touch the old coat which he is pleased to trail after him between the two opposing powers.  This characteristic challenge is soon accepted; the knocking down and yelling are heard; stones fly, and every available weapon is pressed into the service on both sides.  In this manner the battle proceeds, until, probably, a life or two is lost.  Bones, too, are savagely broken, and blood copiously spilled, by men who scarcely know the remote cause of the enmity between the parties.

Such is a hasty sketch of the Pattern, as it is called in Ireland, at which Larry and Sheelah duly performed their station.  We, for our parts, should be sorry to see the innocent pastimes of a people abolished; but, surely, customs which perpetuate scenes of profligacy and crime should not be suffered to stain the pure and holy character of religion.

It is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that Larry O’Toole and Sheelah complied with every rite of the Station.  To kiss the “Lucky Stone,” however, was their principal duty.  Larry gave it a particularly honest smack, and Sheelah impressed it with all the ardor of a devotee.  Having refreshed themselves in the tent, they returned home, and, in somewhat less than a year from that period, found themselves the happy parents of an heir to the half-acre, no less a personage than young Phelim, who was called after St. Phelim, the patron of the “Lucky Stone.”

The reader perceives that Phelim was born under particularly auspicious influence.  His face was the herald of affection everywhere.

From the moment of his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to have a dispute.  Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one unchanging honeymoon.  Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would have mattered not a crona baun.  Phelim, on the contrary, promised to be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry said, “wid the outs an’ ins, the ups an’ downs of his face, the darlin’ swaddy!”