ped
his leather. We children were suspicious that when Jamie bathed Anna had
a hand in it. They had a joke between them that could only be explained
on that basis. She called it "grooming the elephant."

"Jist wait, m' boy," she would say in a spirit of kindly banter, "till
the elephant has to be groomed, and I'll bring ye down a peg or two."

There was a difference of opinion among them as to the training of
children.

"No chile iver thrived on saft words," he said; "a wet welt is
betther."

"Aye, yer wet welt stings th' flesh, Jamie, but it niver gets at a
chile's mind."

"Thrue for you, but who th' ---- kin get at a chile's mind?"

One day I was chased into the house by a bigger boy. I had found a
farthing. He said it was his. The money was handed over and the boy left
with his tongue in his cheek. I was ordered to strip. When ready he laid
me across his knee and applied the "wet welt."

An hour later it was discovered that a week had elapsed between the
losing and finding of the farthing. No sane person would believe that a
farthing could lie for a whole week on the streets of Antrim.

"Well," he said, "ye need a warmin' like that ivery day, an' ye had nown
yestherday, did ye?"

On another occasion I found a ball, one that had never been lost. A boy,
hoping to get me in front of my father, claimed the ball. My mother on
this occasion sat in judgment.

"Where did _you_ get the ball?" she asked the boy. He couldn't remember.
She probed for the truth, but neither of us would give in. When all
efforts failed she cut the ball in half and gave each a piece!

"Nixt time I'll tell yer Dah," the boy said when he got outside, "he
makes you squeal like a pig."

When times were good--when work and wages got a little ahead of hunger,
which was seldom, Anna baked her own bread. Three kinds of bread she
baked. "Soda,"--common flour bread, never in the shape of a loaf, but
bread that lay flat on the griddle; "pirta oaten"--made of flour and
oatmeal; and "fadge"--potato bread. She always sung while baking and she
sang the most melancholy and plaintive airs. As she baked and sang I
stood beside her on a creepie watching the process and awaiting the
end, for at the close of each batch of bread I always had my
"duragh"--an extra piece.

When hunger got ahead of wages the family bread was bought at Sam
Johnson's bakery. The journey to Sam's was full of temptation to me.
Hungry and with a vested interest in the loaf on m