Shakespeare’s seven ages of man may have been more poetical, but it does not betray a closer grip of the Irish temperament.

My other appearance as a literary ghost or rather as an anonymous contributor was when I supplied Mrs. O’Connell with stories for The Last Count of the Irish Brigade.  That was about twenty years ago, and therefore long after the death of the hero who was uncle to the Liberator.

The writer was a daughter of Charles Bianconi, the originator of all the mail-cars in Ireland, who owned at one time sixteen hundred horses, and always laughed at the idea of any violence on the part of the peasantry, pointing out that though his cars daily covered four thousand miles in twenty-two counties, no injury was ever done to any of his property.

Mrs. O’Connell was married to a nephew of the great Dan, and he represented Kerry in Parliament for nearly thirty years.  He was an intimate friend of Thackeray’s, and gave him all the idioms of his delightful Irish ballads.  This O’Connell was a clever, amusing fellow, and precious idle into the bargain.

I remember one story he told me.

Mrs. MacCarthy, near Millstreet, had a son, a small proprietor, and he got married.  The mother-in-law lived with the daughter-in-law, who had rather grand ideas, and set up as parlour-maid in the house a raw lass just taken from the dairy.

One afternoon old Mrs. MacCarthy saw the parish priest coming to call, and told the girl if he asked for Mrs. MacCarthy to say she was not in but the dowager was.

Now the maid had never heard the word dowager in her life, but thought she would make a shot for it, so when his reverence asked if Mrs. MacCarthy was at home, she blurted out:—­

‘No, sir, but the badger is.’

And to her dying day the relic of deceased MacCarthy went by the name of ‘the badger.’

Now it is really time I related how my own beauty was spoilt, by breaking my nose in 1858.

I was racing the present Knight of Kerry and a young gunner named Hickson—­no relation—­on the Strand, when the horse of the latter collided with my own, and they both fell at the same time.  He was a loose rider, and being shot off some distance from his animal picked himself up unhurt.  I had always a tight grip, so I got entangled in the saddle which twisted round, and my mare almost literally tore off my face with her hind hoof.

I walked back a quarter of a mile, trying to hold my face on to my head with my hand; and in a month’s time I was able to get about again, which the doctor said was one of the quickest cases of healing he had ever known.

But I was absolutely unrecognised by my acquaintances when I reappeared, and Mr. Dillon the R.M. actually took me for a walk in Tralee to see the town, thinking I was a stranger, a situation the fun of which I heartily appreciated.

Before that infernal gallop I had a hooked nose like the Duke of Wellington; and it’s lucky I got married when I did, for no one would have had me afterwards, though my own wife always says ‘for shame’ if I make the remark in her presence, God bless her.