to see Irish humour, or in fact to understand what was
meant by it. So when he was on tour with his readings a friend of mine,
who was his host, in the North, undertook to initiate him into the
mysteries of Irish wit. As a sample he gave Dickens the following: A
definition of nothing,--a footless stocking without a leg. This conveyed
nothing whatever to the mind of the greatest of English humourists; but
when my friend took him to a certain spot and showed him a wall built
round a vacant space, and explained to him that the native masons were
instructed to build a wall round an old ruined church to protect it, and
pulled down the church for the material to build the wall, he laughed
heartily, and acknowledged the Irish had a sense of humour after
all,--if not, a quaint absence of it.

To me so-called Irish wit is a curious combination not wholly dependent
on humour, and frequently unconscious. There is a story that when Mr.
Beerbohm Tree arrived in Dublin he was received by a crowd of his
admirers, and jumping on to a car said to his jarvey, "Splendid
reception that, driver!"

The jarvey thought a moment, and replied, "Maybe ye think so, but
begorrah, it ain't a patch on the small-pox scare!" Was that _meant_?

The poor Saxon "towrist"--what he may suffer in the Emerald Isle! There
is a story on record of three Irishmen rushing away from the race
meeting at Punchestown to catch a train back to Dublin. At the moment a
train from a long distance pulled up at the station, and the three men
scrambled in. In the carriage was seated one other passenger. As soon as
they had regained their breath, one said:

"Pat, have you got th' tickets?"

"What tickets? I've got me loife; I thought I'd have lost that gettin'
in th' thrain. Have you got 'em, Moike?"

"Oi, begorrah, I haven't."

"Oh, we're all done for thin," said the third. "They'll charge us roight
from the other soide of Oireland."

The old gentleman looked over his newspaper and said:

"You are quite safe, gintlemen; wait till we get to the next station."

They all three looked at each other. "Bedad, he's a directhor,--we're
done for now entoirely."

But as soon as the train pulled up the little gentleman jumped out and
came back with three first-class tickets. Handing them to the astonished
strangers, he said, "Whist, I'll tell ye how I did it. I wint along the
thrain--'Tickets plaze, tickets plaze,' I called, and these belong to
three Saxon towrists in anot