self of all suspicious characters, and ask for
no more police protection than you require at Oxford.'

He subsided at that, and Froude laughed at him so heartily, that he had
not another word to say on the subject all day.

Did you ever hear the rhyme about moonlighting? It runs as follows:--

'The difference betwixt moonlight and moonshine
The people at last understand,
For moonlight's the law of the League
And moonshine is the law of the land.'

That would have clinched my argument beyond all dispute, but the
expressive poem was not written at that time.

Reverting to the topics of this chapter, it is needless to observe that
there is a bond of connection between constabulary and dispensary
doctors, for the latter are needed on many occasions to attend to the
wounds of those just arrested.

The dispensary doctors do not form a satisfactory feature of Irish life,
simply because the farmers elect individuals out of friendship.

A dispensary doctor had to be appointed at Farranfore, and I was most
anxious to get the best man for the position. So I proposed that the
candidates' papers should all be submitted to Sir Dominic Corragun, a
Roman Catholic physician of high standing in Dublin.

I could not even get a seconder to my motion, which therefore fell
stillborn, and I wrote to Lord Kenmare that if Gull or Jenner had been
suggested, neither of them would have obtained three votes.

Virtually the appointment of the dispensary doctor is vested in the
dispensary Committee, which is a local body, usually consisting of one
or more guardians, and four or five specially elected ratepayers. In the
same way are chosen all the local sanitary authorities, who are of
course under the District Council.

You remember that _Punch_ called the sanitary inspector the insanitary
spectre, but the beneficent climate of Ireland fortunately averts all
the evils his authority would not be able to arrest if it came to really
checking filth.

I remember the occasion of the election of another dispensary doctor,
when I was curtly told that only a moonlighter could hope to be
appointed.

My reply was:--

'I suppose it is easier for him to poison people when he is drunk than
to shoot landlords when in an inebriated condition.'

I do know that a dispensary doctor not thirty miles from Killarney was
thrown out of his trap, because he drove the horse through his own front
door, when he was under the intoxicated impression h