r three
hours in the Court of Exchequer? What has tired you?'--'Listening to Mr.
Scott,' was Holmes' sarcastic reply."

* * * * *

Although rivals in their profession, C. K. Bushe had a great admiration
for Plunket's abilities, and would not listen to any disparagement of
them. One day while Plunket was speaking at the Bar a friend said to
Bushe, "Well, if it was not for the eloquence, I'd as soon listen to
----," who was a very prosy speaker. "No doubt," replied Bushe, "just as
the Connaught man said, ''Pon my conscience if it was not for the malt
and the hops, I'd as soon drink ditch water as porter.'"

There is an impromptu of Bushe's upon two political agitators of the day
who had declined an appeal to arms, one on account of his wife, the
other from the affection in which he held his daughter:

"Two heroes of Erin, abhorrent of slaughter,
Improved on the Hebrew command--
One honoured his wife, and the other his daughter,
That 'their' days might be long in 'the land.'"

A young barrister once tried to raise a laugh at the Mess dinner at the
expense of "Jerry Keller," a barrister who was prominent in social
circles of Dublin, and whose cousin, a wine merchant, held the contract
for supplying wine to the Mess cellar. "I have noticed," said the
junior, "that the claret bottles are growing smaller and smaller at each
Assizes since your cousin became our wine merchant."--"Whist!" replied
Jerry; "don't you be talking of what you know nothing about. It's quite
natural the bottles should be growing smaller, because we all know _they
shrink in the washing_."

An ingenious expedient was devised to save a prisoner charged with
robbery in the Criminal Court at Dublin. The principal thing that
appeared in evidence against him was a confession, alleged to have been
made by him at the police office. The document, purporting to contain
this self-criminating acknowledgment, was produced by the officer, and
the following passage was read from it:

"Mangan said he never robbed but twice
Said it was Crawford."

This, it will be observed, has no mark of the writer having any notion
of punctuation, but the meaning attached to it was, that

"Mangan said he never robbed but twice.
_Said it was Crawford._"

Mr. O'Gorman, the counsel for the prisoner, begged to look at the paper.
He perused it, and rather astonished the peace officer by asserting,
that so far from i