In proof of this, let me quote the delightful account of a centagenarian out of Smith’s History of Kerry, a book already referred to, and which can now be finally put back on its shelf, dry as dust, as Carlyle might say, ’but pregnant with food for thought, ay, and for grim mirth,’—­those are not exactly the words of the Sage of Chelsea, but just have the rub of his tongue about them.

‘Mr. Daniel MacCarty died in February 1751,’ as the account said, ’in the 112th year of his age.  He lived during his whole life in the barony of Iveragh, and buried four wives.  He married a fifth in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and she but a girl of fourteen, by whom he had several children.  He was always a very healthy man, no cold ever affecting him, and he could not bear the warmth of a shirt at night, but put it under his pillow.  He drank for many of the last years of his life great quantities of rum and brandy, which he called the naked truth; and if, in compliance to other gentlemen, he drank claret or punch, he always took an equal quantity of spirits to qualify those liquors:  this he called a wedge.  No man ever saw him spit.  His custom was to walk eight or ten miles in a winter’s morning over mountains with greyhounds and finders, and he seldom failed to bring home a brace of hares.  He was an innocent man, and inherited the social virtues of the antient Milesians.  He was of a florid complexion, looked amazingly well for a person of his age and manners of life, for his use of spirituous liquors was prodigious, a custom that much prevails in these baronies.’

Indeed, no one who was slightly acquainted with the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kerry would suggest that total abstinence was even to-day their predominant virtue.

It is the fashion to say that it is a good thing to be one of a large family.  From a financial point of view I am quite certain that the reverse is preferable, and as I was the youngest of nine—­two others besides those I mentioned, James and Anne, coming to early demises—­I received as many kicks and cuffs from my brethren as I did halfpence and affection from my parents.  So, like Thackeray, as a child I sympathised with Lord MacTurk who wished to cut off the heads of his brethren.  Now I have survived them all, and I fondly regret the sounds of voices that are still.

But as I sit in my arm-chair and ruminate over the past, which every old man must do in the intervals of reading the Times, going to the club, or losing his money by careful attention to speculation, I have the consolation of remembering that I did as much mischief as any other child.  To be a really good child means that the animal is a prig or unhealthy.  To-day I am fond of all my grandchildren, but the one I like best is the one which proves himself or herself the naughtiest for the moment.

This is a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young, but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is best to get the original sin out in the years of innocence.