being ever yet washed his face in that way.  Then he dried it by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian.  Next he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not rebelled and begged off.  He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands.  Then he suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.  I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday.  I “had him” again.  He next recommended some of “Smith’s Hair Glorifier,” and offered to sell me a bottle.  I declined.  He praised the new perfume, “Jones’s Delight of the Toilet,” and proposed to sell me some of that.  I declined again.  He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.

He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise, sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late for the train.  Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang out “Next!”

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later.  I am waiting over a day for my revenge—­I am going to attend his funeral.

“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community.  This may be said of the whole of the North of Ireland.  About one-half of the people are Protestants and the other half Catholics.  Each party does all it can to make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious toward them.  One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this zeal.  A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till all the region round about was marked with blood.  I thought that only Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.