ou dare not diminish it; it is a building which if you
touch or take any part from it, you will think it will all fall. And
I should sooner pawne my clothes or sell a horse, with lesse care
and compulsion than make a breach into that beloved purse which I
kept in store.... I was some yeares of the same humour: I wot not
what good Demon did most profitably remove me from it, like to the
Siracusan, and made me to neglect my sparing.... I live from hand to
mouth, from day to day, and have I but to supplie my present and
ordinarie needs I am satisfied.... And I singularly gratifie myself
this correction came upon me in an age naturally inclined to
covetousnesse, and that I am free from that folly so common and
peculiar to old men, and the most ridiculous of all humane follies.
Feraulez who had passed through both fortunes and found that
encrease of goods was no encrease of appetite to eat, to sleepe or
to embrace his wife; and who on the other side felt heavily on his
shoulders the importunitie of ordering and directing his
Oeconomicall affairs as it doth on mine, determined with himselfe to
content a poore young man, his faithfull friend, greedily gaping
after riches, and frankly made him a present donation of all his
great and excessive riches, always provided hee should undertake to
entertaine and find him, honestly and in good sort, as his guest and
friend. In which estate they lived afterwards most happily and
mutually content with the change of their condition."

And so I hope it may come to pass with the remaining years of Simon
and of Damer.

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or,
as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that
lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for
the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs
placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance. One of them was
always McDonough. He was the best of all the wandering pipers who
went about from house to house. When, at my marriage, I moved from
the barony of Dunkellin to the neighbouring barony of Kiltartan, he
came and played at the dance given to the tenants in my honour, and
he came and played also at my son's coming of age. Not long after
that he died. The last time I saw him he came to ask for a loan of
money to take the train to Ennis, where there was some fair or
gathering of people going on, and I would not lend to so old