y to their natural tendency. Having daily repeated
this until we had made it straight, and renewed the oil wrapping paper
until the staff was perfectly saturated, we then rubbed it well with a
woollen cloth, containing a little black-lead and grease, to give it
a polish. This was the last process, except that if we thought it too
light at the top, we used to bore a hole in the lower end with a red-hot
iron spindle, into which we poured melted lead, for the purpose of
giving it the knock-down weight.

There were very few of Paddy Mulligan's scholars without a choice
collection of such cudgels, and scarcely one who had not, before his
fifteenth year, a just claim to be called the hero of a hundred fights,
and the heritor of as many bumps on the cranium as would strike both
Gall and Spurzheim speechless.

Now this, be it known, was, and in some districts yet is, an integral
part of an Irish peasant's education. In the northern parts of Ireland,
where the population of the Catholics on the one side, and of Protestant
and Dissenters on the other, is nearly equal, I have known the
respective scholars of Catholic and Protestant schools to challenge each
other and meet half-way to do battle, in vindication of their respective
creeds; or for the purpose of establishing the character of their
respective masters as the more learned man; for if we were to judge by
the nature of the education then received, we would be led to conclude
that a more commercial nation than Ireland was not on the face of the
earth, it being the indispensable part of every scholar's business to
become acquainted with the _three sets of Bookkeeping_.

The boy who was the handiest and the most daring with the cudgel at
Paddy Mulligan's school was Denis Kelly, the son of a wealthy farmer
in the neighborhood. He was a rash, hot-tempered, good-natured lad,
possessing a more than common share of this blackthorn ambition; on
which account he was cherished by his relations as a boy that was likely
at a future period to be able to walk over the course of the parish,
in fair, market, or patron. He certainly grew up a stout, able young
fellow; and before he reached nineteen years, was unrivalled at the
popular exercises of the peasantry. Shortly after that time he made
his debut in a party-quarrel, which took place in one of the Christmas
Margamores, (* Big Markets) and fully sustained the anticipations which
were formed of him by his relations. For a year or two