per cent, from a grumbling and unsatisfactory set
of tenants. And what are you getting? Twenty-one per cent. in this world
and salvation in the next. It's the most damnable interest I ever heard
tell of, either in this world or any other.'

Yet another tale about him.

He had received an unconscionable bill of costs from an attorney, and
happening to meet a Roman Catholic bishop in Cork, he asked him if an
attorney could ever be saved.

'Why not? Even an extortioner can be if he make ample restitution in his
life-time, and dies fortified with the rites of the Church.'

'May be so, my lord,' replied Sir James, 'you know more about these
things than I do, but if it is as you say, you are taking a confounded
amount of unnecessary trouble about the rest of us.'

The bishop was not a bit disconcerted.

'I am an honest labourer striving to be worthy of my hire,' he
explained.

And at that Sir James left it, because he said it was not respectful to
ask too many invidious questions about a man who had the making of your
soul at his own will.

All this is a digression from my education, which was as desultory as
these reminiscences.

After a spell at Limerick I was again sent home ill, and for six months
I really had to be treated as an invalid. I was always very fond of
books, notably history, and I think I have read pretty well every book
published upon the history of Ireland. It was at this time I began
teaching myself a bit, and that is the teaching which is better than any
other, except what one has to learn against one's own will and for one's
own advantage in the school of life. Like a good many other people I was
led to history not only by a shortage of lighter books at home, but also
by curiosity aroused by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In the way of
promoting better reading, I believe Scott has been far more beneficial
than any other writer of fiction in English.

I was for a short time at school in Exeter, and then at a rather rough
establishment at Woolwich, where my father wished me to have the tuition
in mathematics which could be obtained from the masters in the Academy
at irregular times. By all accounts the fagging and bullying in that
establishment were appalling. The headmaster of the school I was at was
an able fellow, and many of the cadets used to come to have a grind with
him. Some of their tales were 'hair-erectors,' as the Americans say.

One new boy had the misfortune to sprain his ankle