Even when a farmer has a tidy sum of money on deposit with the bank at one per cent., if he wants to employ a sum for a short time, say for the purchase of cattle, he prefers to raise the money on a bill at six per cent.

That is to say, the bank is lending him his own money at five per cent.—­a truly Hibernian trait, which it would be difficult to beat anywhere.

A bill for drink is not recoverable, but occasionally an insidious publican will take a man’s I.O.U. and sue on that.

One applied to me to help him to get the money from a tenant.

‘You must show me the account,’ said I.

As I suspected, there was whisky in it, and I declined on the spot.

All drink in Ireland is on cash down terms only.

If they gave tick, they would never recover the money, and if every Irishman is a knowing scoundrel, the publican is a trifle more knowledgable than the customer, whose brains are besodden.

A man, who had been a servant of mine, started a public near Tralee, and thinking he would get customers from the other whisky stores, he gave tick.  His popularity lasted just as long as the tick did, and a week later he was broke.  I do not say so much about Tralee being able to support one hundred and sixty liquor shops, because there is a little shipping, but how Cahirciveen can enable fifty publicans to thrive is a melancholy mystery to me.

I was animadverting once, at Dingle, on the topic, when one of my labourers remarked:—­

‘It’s the gentry does the drinking.’

‘Now that’s very curious,’ said I, ’for as there are only two of us, and as I never touch spirits, the other must have such a thirst that he’d consume the bay if only it were made of whisky.’

In these democratic days, it is as well to resist any undue aspersion on the upper classes.

To pass any aspersion on the bibulous propensities of a tenant of mine named Flaherty would be impossible.  When he was buying his farm, I told him the Government ought to take him on very easy terms, when they became his landlords.

‘And for why?’ he asked.

‘Because,’ I replied, ’the duty you pay on the whisky you drink is more than twenty times your annual rent.’

I had, however, one personal illustration of the drinking propensity in Scotland, which I think is worth preserving.  It is some years now since I went to see a certain farmer who, his wife told me, on noticing my approach, was compelled to go upstairs to cool his head as it was after dinner.  She said this much in the same casual tone, as I should mention that my wife had gone up early to dress for that meal.

Next, I heard heavy splashing of water, and then a crash which portended that the farmer had fallen over the washstand, making a fearful clatter.

In rushed the drab of a servant maid, perfectly indifferent to my presence, shrieking:—­

’O missus, come up, come up, the maister is just miraculous among the chaney!’