o, and that at twenty he
will be in his intellectual zenith. Summer does not fulfil the promise of
Spring.

But as occasionally there is one of those beautiful, glowing Irish girls
who leaves footsteps that endure (in bettered lives), instead of merely
transient tracks in mud, so there has been a Burke, a Wellington, an
O'Connell, a Sheridan, a Tom Moore and an Oliver Goldsmith.

* * * * *

While Goldsmith was an Irishman, Swift was an Englishman
who chanced to be born of Irish parents in Dublin. In comparing these men
Thackeray says: "I think I would rather have had a cold potato and a
friendly word from Goldsmith than to have been beholden to the Dean for a
guinea and a dinner. No; the Dean was not an Irishman, for no Irishman
ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart."

Charles Goldsmith was a clergyman, passing rich on forty pounds a year.
He had a nice little family of eight children, and what became of the
seven who went not astray I do not know. But the smallest and homeliest
one of the brood became the best-loved man in London. These sickly boys
who have been educated only because they were too weak to work--what a
record their lives make!

Little Oliver had a pug-nose and bandy legs, and fists not big enough to
fight, but he had a large head, and because he was absent-minded, lots of
folks thought him dull and stupid, and others were sure he was very bad.
In fact, let us admit it, he did steal apples and rifle birds' nests, and
on "the straggling fence that skirts the way," he drew pictures of Paddy
Byrne, the schoolmaster, who amazed the rustics by the amount of
knowledge he carried in one small head. But Paddy Byrne did not love art
for art's sake, so he applied the ferule vigorously to little Goldsmith's
anatomy, with a hope of diverting the lad's inclinations from art to
arithmetic. I do not think the plan was very successful, for the
pockmarked youngster was often adorned with the dunce-cap.

"And, Sir," said Doctor Johnson, many years after, "it must have been
very becoming."

It seems that Paddy Byrne "boarded round," and part of the time was under
the roof of the rectory. Now we all know that schoolmasters are dual
creatures, and that once away from the schoolyard, and having laid aside
the robe of office, are often good, honest, simple folks. In his official
capacity Paddy Byrne made things very uncomfortable for the pug-nosed
little boy, but, like the true