ymaking and harvesting: 'Taste fashions
the man' was a saw of ould Father O'Rourke's; 'though divil a taste had
he, but for draining the whiskey bottle and bating the boys, bad luck to
his mimory! 'Is it yourself?' said I, to young squire O'Sullivan, from
Scullanabogue, whom good fortune threw in my way the very first day I
was in London.--'Troth, and it is, Barney,' said he: 'What brings you to
the sate of government?' 'I'm seeking sarvice and fortune, your onor,'
said I. 'Come your ways, then, my darling,' said he; and, without more
to do, he made me his _locum tenens_, first clerk, messenger, and man of
all work to a Maynooth Milesian. There was onor enough in all conscience
for me, only it was not vary profitable. For, altho' my master followed
the law, the law wouldn't follow him, and he'd rather more bags than
briefs:--the consequence was, I had more banyan days than the man in the
wilderness. Divil a'care, I got a character by my conduct, and a good
place when I left him, as your ~26~~govonor can testify. As for poor
Teddy, divil a partikle of taste had he for fashionable life, but a
mighty pratty notion of the arts, so he turned operative arkitekt;
engaged himself to a layer of bricks, and skipped nimbly up and down a
five story ladder with a long-tailed box upon his shoulder--pace be to
his ashes! He was rather too fond of the _crature_--many's the slip he
had for his life--one minute breaking a jest, and the next breaking a
joint; till there wasn't a sound limb to his body. Arrah, sure, it
was all the same to Teddy--only last Monday, he was more elevated than
usual, for he had just reached the top of the steeple of one of the new
churches with a three gallon can of beer upon his _knowledge-box_, and,
perhaps a little too much of the _crature_ inside o! it. 'Shout, Teddy,
to the honour of the saint,' said the foreman of the works (for they
had just completed the job). Poor Teddy's religion got the better of
his understanding, for in shouting long life to the dedicatory saint, he
lost his own--missed his footing, and pitched over the scaffold like an
odd chimney-pot in a high wind, and came down smash to the bottom with
a head as flat as a bump. Divil a word has he ever spake since; for when
they picked him up, he was dead as a Dublin bay herring--and now he
lies in his cabin in Dyot-street, St. Giles, as stiff as a poker,--and
to-night, your onor, we are going to _wake_ him, poor sowl! to smoke a
pipe, and spake