. There's still a
crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlour-table, profusion,
confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his
fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a percentage of
his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith(175) left but little provision
for his hungry race when death summoned him; and one of his daughters
being engaged to a squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith
impoverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry.

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the
roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's
face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and
disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him
his letters, and pronounced him a dunce: Paddy Byrne, the
hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne, he was
transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in
those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr.
So-and-so's _ferule_. Poor little ancestors! It is hard to think how
ruthlessly you were birched; and how much of needless whipping and tears
our small forefathers had to undergo! A relative--kind Uncle Contarine,
took the main charge of little Noll; who went through his school-days
righteously doing as little work as he could: robbing orchards, playing at
ball, and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to
him. Everybody knows the story of that famous "Mistake of a Night", when
the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the
"best house" in Ardagh, called for the landlord's company over a bottle of
wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning; and
found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire
Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know
every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of
the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old
fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness--and called him Aesop, and little
Noll made his repartee of "Heralds proclaim aloud this saying--See Aesop
dancing and his monkey playing". One can fancy a queer pitiful look of
humour and appeal upon that little scarred face--the funny little dancing
figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writings, which are
the honest expression of