--fancy, 'Major
_Maria_,' or 'Major _Margery_'!"

"Oh, my lord," said my father quickly, "I have fancied all that long
ago, and got a cure ready for it. My wife not having been blessed with
boys, we thought it wise to make the girls ready for any chance that
might turn up, and so we christened the eldest George, the second Jack,
and the third Tom; which enables us to call them Georgina, Jacqueline,
and Thomasine, in company, while the secret of their real names rests
between ourselves and the parish register. Now, my lord, what do you
say? I have George, Jack, and Tom--think of your _bill_!" The argument
was conclusive, and the patriotic man got the majority of a cavalry
corps, with perpetual leave of absence, for his daughter Jack, who
would much rather have joined the regiment.

Such were the days in which our Furlong flourished; and in such days it
will not be wondered at that a Secretary, when he had no place to give
away, invented one. The old saying has it, that "Necessity is the
mother of invention;" but an Irish Secretary can beat necessity hollow.
For example--

A commission was issued, with a handsome salary to the commissioner, to
make a measurement through all the streets of Dublin, ascertaining the
exact distances from the Castle, from a furlong upwards: and for many a
year did the commission work, inserting handsome stone slabs into walls
of most ignorant houses, till then unconscious of their precise
proximity or remoteness from the seat of government. Ever after that,
if you saw some portly building, blushing in the pride of red brick,
and perfumed with fresh paint, and saw the tablet recording the
interesting fact thus--

+------------------+
| FROM THE CASTLE, |
| ONE FURLONG. |
+------------------+

Fancy might suggest that the house rejoiced, as it were, in its honoured
position, and did

--"look so fine, and smell so sweet,"

because it was under the nose of viceroyalty, while the suburbs
revealed poor tatterdemalion tenements, dropping their slates like
tears, and uttering their hollow sighs through empty casements, merely
because they were "one mile two furlongs from the Castle." But the new
stone tablet which told you so seemed to mock their misery, and looked
like a fresh stab into their poor old sides; as if the rapier of a king
had killed a beggar.

This very original measure