_, and perpetual good temper. He was a thorough
French scholar, and had read the better portion of their modern
literature. On leaving Paris he had gone to Rome on a begging
expedition, to raise funds for building chapels in his own country,
and there too he had been well received; and from thence he had
returned to take possession of a populous parish in one of the very
poorest parts of Ireland.

With all his acquirements, however, in many things Father John was
little better than a child. Though his zeal had enabled him to raise
money for the church, he could never keep any of his own; he had
always his little difficulties, and though he sedulously strove to
live within his income, and never really much outstripped it, he was
always in want of money. He had built his house, and, unlike his
neighbour, had managed to pay for it; but he was always in trouble
about it; the rats were in the roof, and his flooring was all warped,
and his windows would neither open nor shut, and the damp would
get to his books. Therefore, though his cottage was, exteriorly,
the prettiest house in his parish, interiorly, it was discomfort
personified.

A more hospitable man than Father McGrath never lived even in
Connaught; he took a look in at dinner time as a personal favour; and
whatever might be the state of his larder, his heart was always full,
and the emptiness of the former never troubled him. He had not the
slightest shame at asking any one to eat potatoes and cold mutton.
They all knew him, and what they were likely to get at his house, and
if they did not choose, they need not come. Whoever did come had as
good as he had himself. A more temperate man never lived; but he had
as much pleasure in seeing another man drink a tumbler of punch, as
any one else would in drinking it himself. He kept under his own bed
a great stone jar, always, partly at least, full of whiskey of native
manufacture; and though, were he alone, the jar would long have
remained untouched, as it was, it very often had to be refilled.
Tumblers he had only two; when his guests exceeded that, the tea-cups
made their appearance, and he would naively tell his friends that he
meant to buy tumblers when he got any money; but, heaven help them!
if he got in debt, the people would never be paid.

His whole domestic arrangements were on a par: his crockery was of a
most heterogeneous and scanty description; his furniture of the most
common kind, put in bit by bit, as