traces
Through mortal his line,
Beauty born of the Graces
Ranks next to divine.'

I asked the Reverend Father if he were descended from Galloping O'Hogan,
who helped Patrick Sarsfield to spike the guns of the Williamites at
Limerick.

"By me sowl, ma'am, it's not discinded at all I am; I am one o' the
common sort, just," he answered, broadening his brogue to make me smile.
A delightful man he was, exactly such an one as might have sprung full
grown from a Lever novel; one who could talk equally well with his flock
about pigs or penances, purgatory or potatoes, and quote Tom Moore and
Lover when occasion demanded.

Story after story fell from his genial lips, and at last he said
apologetically, "One more, and I have done," when a pretty woman,
sitting near him, interpolated slyly, "We might say to you, your
reverence, what the old woman said to the eloquent priest who finished
his sermon with 'One word, and I have done'".

"An' what is that, ma'am?" asked Father O'Hogan.

"'Och! me darlin' pracher, may ye niver be done!'"

We all agreed that we should like to reconstruct the scene for a moment
and look at a drawing-room of two hundred years ago, when the Lady
Lieutenant after the minuets at eleven o'clock went to her basset table,
while her pages attended behind her chair, and when on ball nights
the ladies scrambled for sweetmeats on the dancing-floor. As to their
probable toilets, one could not give purer pleasure than by quoting Mrs.
Delany's description of one of them:--

'The Duchess's dress was of white satin embroidered, the bottom of the
petticoat brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every
breadth had an old stump of a tree, that ran up almost to the top of
the petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown chenille, round
which twined nasturtiums, ivy, honeysuckles, periwinkles, and all sorts
of running flowers, which spread and covered the petticoat.... The
robings and facings were little green banks covered with all sorts of
weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the gown loose twining branches
of the same sort as those on the petticoat. Many of the leaves were
finished with gold, and part of the stumps of the trees looked like the
gilding of the sun. I never saw a piece of work so prettily fancied.'

She adds a few other details for the instruction of her sister Anne:--

'Heads are variously adorned; pompons with some accompaniment of
feathers, ribbons, or f