y is worth telling. The vehicle in question had just been purchased
by a certain Miss Mullins, daughter of a former Lord Ventry, who
regarded it on its arrival with almost sacred awe. A dance in the
neighbourhood seemed an appropriate opportunity for impressing the
county with her newly acquired grandeur, but the night proving wet, she
insisted on reverting to a former mode of progression, and rode pillion
behind her coachman.

The result was that she caught a violent chill, which turned to
pneumonia, and as her relatives were assembled round her deathbed, the
old lady exclaimed, between her last gasps for breath:--

'Thank God I never took out the carriage that wet night.'

CHAPTER II

PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS

My father, Peter Bodkin Hussey, was for a long time a barrister at the
Irish Bar, practising in the Four Courts, where more untruths are spoken
than anywhere else in the three kingdoms, except in the House of Commons
during an Irish debate. All law in Ireland is a grave temptation to
lying, and the greatest number of Courts produced a stupendous amount of
mendacity--or it was so in earlier times, at all events.

Did you ever hear the tale of the old woman who came to Daniel
O'Connell, outside the Four Courts, as he was walking down the steps,
and said to him:--

'Would your honour be so kind as to tell me the name of an honest
attorney?'

The Liberator stopped, scratched his head in a perplexed way, and
replied:--

'Well now, ma'am, you bate me intoirely.'

My father had red hair, and was very impetuous. Therefore he was
christened 'Red Precipitate' by Jerry Kellegher.

This legal luminary was a noted wit even at the Irish Bar of that time,
a confraternity where humour was almost as rampant as
creditors--irresponsible fun, and a light purse are generally allied;
your wealthy fellow has too much care for his gold to have spirits to be
mirthful.

The tales about him are endless. Here are just a few I have heard from
my father's lips.

Jerry had a cousin, a wine merchant, who supplied the Bar mess, and a
complaint was lodged that the bottles were very small.

To which Jerry retorted:--

'You idiot, don't you know they shrink in the washing,' which satisfied
the grumbler. And that always seemed to me the strangest part of the
story.

In those days religious feeling ran pretty high--I will not go so far as
to say it has entirely died down to-day--and the usual Protestant toast
was:--