’For the love of God tell your mother to order your father’s coffin for he’ll need it, the Saints preserve us.’

And with that she started away before there was time to reply.

Nothing came of it, of course:  nothing ever has, of real importance.

Nothing, alas, also seems so often to be the verdict on life when looking back.  Mine, however, has been too full a one, not only with griefs and trials but also with happiness and fun, for me to dismiss it thus.  There has been so much more to live through than to write about, and yet, in these pages, has been told something which would have gone for ever untold if I had not in old age become garrulous.  Things forgotten have been recalled to my mind and may prove suggestive to other people who read them, and it is my hope, in concluding, that I have provided diversion and a little food for reflection.

I feel that a critic may consider too much that has been set down here is disconnected, yet if he will let a gramophone record an animated conversation, he will find that it ebbs and flows with the uncertain babbling of a brook—­and so it has been with me.  Only the other day, in the preface to Camden’s History of the British Islands, I came across the phrase:—­

‘bookes receive their doome according to the reader’s capacitie,’

and that alone emboldens me to hope for some measure of success for the present volume.  Readers do not always want serious subjects, and it is in an hour when they desire a little diversion that I hope my reminiscences may commend themselves, for in a phrase not unknown in my native Kerry, this book consists of ‘little things, and that away.’

THE END

INDEX

Abbey of St. Denis, Paris, 79. 
Abbeyfeale, 253, 259. 
Abercorn, Duke of, 165. 
Aberdeen, Earl of, 167-168.
——­ Lady, 167-168. 
Acts—­
  Arrears, 183, 184, 197. 
  Crimes, 183, 262. 
  Encumbered Estate, 71. 
  Habeas Corpus Suspension, 225. 
  Irish Church, 44, 180-181. 
  Land, see under Land. 
  Riot, 251. 
  Union, of, 180. 
  Westminster, of 1871, 251. 
Adams, Mr. Gould, of Kilmachill, 207. 
Aghabey, 83. 
Aghadoe, 3, 95, 254. 
Agriculture, Commission on, 268. 
Albert, Prince, 163. 
America, Irish dissatisfaction fostered in, 289;
  Home Rulers in, 289-290. 
Anderson, Rev. J.A., O.S.A., 99. 
Ardfert, 3. 
Argyll, Duke of, 174. 
Ashbourne, Lord, 286. 
Athenry, 171. 
Avonmore, Lord, 12.

Balfour, Mr. A.J., Chief Secretaryship of, 172-174.
——­ Mr. Gerald, Chief Secretaryship of, 172-173.
——­ of Burleigh, Lord, 274. 
Ballincushlane, 121. 
Ballot, effects of introduction, 194. 
Bally M’Elligott, 6. 
Ballybeggan, 4. 
Ballybunion, 90. 
Ballyporeen, Petty Sessions at, 164.