iption, while the rent was added by the presentment of
the county, and not paid out of the rates. It was in those days a common
practice for dispensary doctors to put down on the list imaginary
subscriptions from friends, so as to draw more from the county.

A young fellow, whose name had thus been used, fired into a Protestant
doctor's house, and threatened to murder everybody unless he was given
some money.

He obtained half a crown, with which he bought a pint of whisky and a
mutton pie; but just as he was putting his teeth into the crust of the
latter, he paused in horror.

'I was near being lost for ever, body and soul,' says he, 'this being
Friday, and me so close on tasting meat.'

The woman in the place where he bought the provisions proposed to keep
the mutton pie for him until the following day.

He thanked her civilly, and went away, but had the misfortune to mistake
the police barracks for the rival whisky store, and was promptly
arrested for threatening with intent to do injury.

The next day he asked to be allowed to eat his pie, which is how the
story came out.

The dispensaries are often worked with more attention to the pocket of
those on the premises than is compatible with the principles of honesty,
as recognised outside the legal and medical professions. At one
dispensary in Kerry the Local Government Board was horrified at the
consumption of quinine--an expensive medicine. Indeed, so much
disappeared that, if it had not been for the chronic aversion of any
low-born Irishman to outside applications of liquid, it might have been
surmised that the patients were taking quinine baths. The matter was
privately put into the hands of the police, who within a week arrested
the secretary getting out of a back window with a big bottle of quinine,
which he meant to sell.

That man, for the rest of his life, inveighed against the petty and
mischievous interference with private industry tyrannically waged by
public bodies.

I should like to claim for Kerry the honour of being the land where the
following hoary chestnut originally was perpetrated, the exact locality
being Castleisland.

A landlord, who had returned in a fit of absent-mindedness to his
property after a sojourn in England, was condoling with a woman on the
death of her husband, and asked:--

'What did he die of?'

'Wishna, then, did he not die a natural death, your honour, for there
was no doctor attending him?'

A not dissimilar s