d by the wealth or
poverty, ignorance, or knowledge, of those who offered them. Some poor
relation, for instance, brought him a shirt or two of materials so
coarse, that to wear it in a college would be out of the question;
others offered him a pair of brogues, much too vulgar for the society he
was about to enter; others, again, would present him with books--for
it is not at all uncommon to find in many illiterate Irish families
half-a-dozen old volumes of whose contents they are ignorant, lying in
a dusty corner, where they are kept till some young scion shall be
sufficiently instructed to peruse them. The names of these were singular
enough. One presented him with "The Necessity of Penance;" another with
"Laugh and be Fat;" a third with the "Key of Paradise;" a fourth
with "Hell Open;" a fifth handed him a copy of the "Irish Rogues and
Rapparees; a sixth gave him "Butler's Lives of Saints;" a seventh "The
Necessity of Fasting;" an eighth "The Epicure's _Vade Mecum_." The list
ran on very ludicrously. Among them were the "Garden of Love and Royal
Flower of Fidelity;" "An Essay on the Virtue of Celibacy;" and another
"On the Increase of Population in Ireland." To these we may add "The
Devil upon Two Sticks," and "The Life of St. Anthony."

"Take these, Misther Denis," said the worthy souls; "they're of no use
to us at all at all; but they'll sarve you, of coorse, where you're
goin', bekase when you want books in the college you can use them."

Honest Phadrick Murray, in lieu of a more valuable present, brought him
his wife's largest and best shawl as a pocket handkerchief.

"Katty, sir, sent you this," said Phadrick, "as a pocket handkerchy; an'
be gorra, Mither Denis, if you begin at this corner, an' take it out o'
the face, it'll last you six months at a time, any how."

Another neighbor came with a _cool_ of rendered lard, hoping it might be
serviceable.

"Norah, sir," said the honest friend who brought it, "sent you a' crock
of her own lard. When, you're makin' colcanon, sir, or _sthilk_,* in
the college, if you slip in a lamp of this, it'll save you the price of
bufther. The grace 'ill be useful to you, whether or not; an' they say
there's a scarcity of it in the college.".

* Sthilk is made by bruising a quantity of boiled
Potatoes and beans together. The potatoes, however,
having first been reduced to a pulpy state, the beans
are but partially broken. It is then put into dish, and