ngs of our times
was a simple Irish parish priest, the late Father Healy. Of his
humorous sayings the number is legion; his wit may be illustrated by
a less familiar example--his comment on a very tall young lady named
Lynch: "Nature gave her an inch and she took an ell." In the House of
Commons today there is no greater master of irony and sardonic humor
than his namesake, Mr. Tim Healy. On one occasion he remarked that
Lord Rosebery was not a man to go tiger-shooting with--except at the
Zoo. On another, being anxious to bring an indictment against the
"Castle" _regime_ in Dublin and finding the way blocked by a debate
on Uganda, he successfully accomplished his purpose by a judicious
geographical transference of names, and convulsed the House by a
speech in which the nomenclature of Central Africa was applied to the
government of Ireland.

But wit and humor are the monopoly of no class or calling in Ireland.
They flourish alike among car-drivers and K.C.'s, publicans and
policemen, priests and parsons, beggars and peers. It is a
commonplace of criticism to deny these qualities in their highest
form to women. But this is emphatically untrue of Ireland, and was
never more conclusively disproved than by the recent literary
achievements of her daughters. The partnership of two Irish ladies,
Miss Edith Somerville and Miss Violet Martin, has given us, in _Some
Experiences of an Irish R.M._ (_i.e._, Resident Magistrate), the most
delicious comedy, and in _The Real Charlotte_ the finest
tragi-comedy, that have come out of Great Britain in the last thirty
years. The _R.M._, as it is familiarly called, is already a classic,
but the Irish _comedie humaine_--to use the phrase in the sense of
Balzac--is even more vividly portrayed in the pages of _The Real
Charlotte_. Humor, genuine though intermittent, irradiates the
autumnal talent of Miss Jane Barlow, and the long roll of gifted
Irishwomen who have contributed to the gaiety of nations may be
closed with the names of Miss Hunt, author of _Folk Tales of
Breffny_; of Miss Purdon and Miss Winifred Letts, who in prose and
verse, respectively, have moved us to tears and laughter by their
studies of Leinster peasant life; and of "Moira O'Neill" (Mrs.
Skrine), the incomparable singer of the Glens of Antrim. To give a
full list of the living Irish writers, male and female, who are
engaged in the benevolent work of driving dull care away would be
impossible within the space at our comm