Replied one of the men:—­

’He is not dead yet at all; but the doctor says he will be before the morning; and sure he should know, for he knows what he gave him.’

Sometimes, however, the patient is quite as clever as the doctor.

A physician in Dublin had a telephone put in his bedroom, and when he was rung up about half-past one on a freezing wintry night, he told his wife to answer it.

She complied, and informed him:—­

‘It is Mr. Shamus O’Brien, and he wants you to come round at once.’

The physician knew this to be purely an imaginary case of illness, so not wishing to be disturbed, said to her:—­

‘Tell him the doctor is out, and will not be home till morning.’

Unfortunately he spoke so near the telephone that his remark was audible to the patient.  So when the wife had duly delivered the message, the answer came back:—­

‘If the man in your bed is a doctor, send him here.’

CHAPTER XIV

IRISH CHARACTERISTICS

It’s the proudest boast of my life that I am an Irishman, and the compliment which I have most appreciated in my time was being called ‘the poor man’s friend,’ for I love Paddy dearly though I see his faults.  Yes, perhaps one of the reasons why I love him is because I do see the faults, for the errors of an Irishman are often almost as good as the virtues of an Englishman, and are far more diverting into the bargain.  You must not judge Paddy by the same standard as you apply to John.  To begin with, he has not had the advantages, and secondly, there’s an ingrained whimsicality, for which I would not exchange all the solid imperfections of his neighbour across the Irish Channel.

You would not judge all Scotland by Glasgow, and so you should not fall into the error of judging all Ireland by Belfast.  Kerry is the jewel of Ireland, and it is with Kerry that I have fortunately had most to do in my life.

Whilst I am alluding to the mistake of generalising, let me point out how erroneous it is ever, historically, to talk of Ireland as one country.  When Henry II. annexed the whole land by a confiscation more open but not more criminal than that instigated by Mr. Gladstone, there were four perfectly separate kingdoms in the island.  Now there are four provinces which are quite distinct, and an Ulster man, or a Munster man, or a Connaught man, knows far more, as a rule, of England, or even Scotland, than he does of the other three provinces of his native isle.  For one Ulster man who has been in Munster, three hundred have been to Liverpool or Greenock, and until lately there was no railway between Connaught and Munster, so that you had to go nearly up to Dublin to get from one to the other.