’Marry yourself to this, your reverence, and we’ll be happy with your blessing.’

As the persuasive eloquence of another man could not abate the price which his priest demanded for a funeral, he blurted out:—­

’Why, the blessed corpse in purgatory would shiver at the thought of costing so much to put away, and we but poor folk, with the pig that contrary we don’t know whether the litter will survive.’

Here is a fish story connected with a member of my own family, Miss Clarissa Hussey, who was my aunt, and also a pious Roman Catholic.  She used to hospitably entertain her confessor Father Tom, a priest with a keen appreciation of the good things of the table.  Among his parishioners it was known that he indicated the value he put on the coming fare by the length of his preliminary grace.

On a certain Friday in Lent he dined with her, and on a huge dish being put down in front of his hostess, he expected a fine salmon, and shutting his eyes proceeded to pronounce a benediction the length of which greatly gratified my aunt.  On the cover being removed, however, his face fell, and in severe tones he rebuked her:—­

‘Was it for bake, ma’am, that I offered up the full grace?’

Nor could he be appeased all through the meal.

That leads me to relate the funeral sermon delivered by a clergyman on a lady who had died suddenly at her morning meal:—­

’You all, dear brethren, well know the loss we have sustained in our departed sister.  She was ever alert and kindly, ever bountiful though without extravagance.  To the last she preserved her characteristics.  On the fatal morning of her removal from among us, she rose as usual and came to the family breakfast-table.  With no premonition of what was to come she took her egg-spoon and cracked her egg, an egg laid by one of her own hens.  In another moment failure of the heart transferred her to a higher sphere.  She began that egg on earth, she finished it in heaven.’

CHAPTER XIII

CONSTABULARY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS

An Englishman once asked me, if I could suggest any way by which all Ireland could be made loyal.  I inquired if he thought the Irish constabulary a loyal body.

‘Most decidedly,’ said he, without hesitation.

‘Then,’ I replied, ’if you will pay every Irishman seventy pounds a year for doing nothing, but look after other people’s affairs—­a thing by nature congenial to him as it is—­you’ll have the most loyal race on earth.’

That Englishman went away thoughtful, but I had shown him the solution of one Irish problem which may be stated thus:—­

Why do one half of the sons of farmers in Ireland, who have been or are members of the Irish constabulary, represent a body of men unequalled for their respectability, loyalty, and courage, while a large proportion of the other, at least in the eighties, made up the bulk of the ignoble army of moonlighters, cattle maimers, and cowardly assassins crouching behind stone walls to shoot at an unsuspecting victim in the opening?