“I suppose there is scarcely any one here now, except myself, that remembers the great cause of Mills versus Mulcahy, a widow and others, that was tried in Ennis, in the year ’82.  It’s no matter if there is not.  Perhaps it may be more agreeable for me, for I can tell my story my own version, and not be interrupted.  Well, that was called the old record, for they tried it seventeen times.  I believe, on my conscience, it killed old Jones, who was in the Common Pleas; he used to say, if he put it for trial on the day of judgment, one of the parties would be sure to lodge an appeal.  Be that as it may, the Millses engaged Peter special, and brought him down with a great retainer, in a chaise and four, flags flying, and favors in the postillions’ hats, and a fiddler on the roof playing the ‘hare in the corn.’  The inn was illuminated the same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn’t a man in the mob didn’t cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.  But it all went off well, nevertheless, for Peter was a clever fellow; and although he liked money well, he liked popularity more, and he never went any where special that he hadn’t a public meeting of some kind or other, either to abolish rents, or suppress parsons, or some such popular and beneficial scheme, which always made him a great favourite with the people, and got him plenty of clients.  But I am wandering from the record.  Purcell came down, as I said before, special for Mills; and when he looked over his brief, and thought of the case, he determined to have it tried by a gentlemen jury, for although he was a great man with the mob, he liked the country gentlemen better in the jury box, for he was always coming out with quotations from the classics, which, whether the grand jury understood or not, they always applauded very much.  Well, when he came into court that morning, you may guess his surprise and mortification to find that the same jury that had tried a common ejectment case, were still in the box, and waiting, by the chief justice’s direction, to try Mills versus Mulcahy, the great case of the assizes.

“I hear they were a set of common clod-hopping wretches, with frize coats and brogues, that no man could get round at all, for they were as cunning as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense, rather better than people with better coats on them.

“Now, the moment that Mr. Purcell came into the court, after bowing politely to the judge, he looked up to the box, and when he saw the dirty faces of the dealers in pork and potatoes, and the unshaven chins of the small farmers, his heart fell within him, and he knew in a minute how little they’d care for the classics—­if he quoted Caesar’s Commentaries itself for them—­ignorant creatures as they were!