100 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



when two men got in and hung at the window 

 waiting for someone. 



" He will be late on us. Here he is at the last. 

 Hurry on, Mikey." 



Mikey appeared with a black bottle, and 

 breathless. " Here it is for ye." 



One of the men took the bottle. "What is it, 

 Mikey — three sthars ? There is no label. I do 

 not see the label. Not a sign of three sthars do I 

 see, Mikey." 



" Let ye dhrink enough of it an' ye'U soon see 

 three sthars," said Mikey, melting away with a 

 grin. 



A nation of grown-up children with children's 

 warm hearts and sensitiveness, easily led into 

 folly, as easily led to success ; perhaps the finest 

 soldiers anywhere. Improvident, yet the hardest 

 of workers, and now a prosperous nation and a 

 contented one. 



But to the end of time do not expect an Irish- 

 man to talk crude common-sense, or to talk non- 

 sense without his own reason for what he has said 

 deep in his mind. 



When Cuthbert tells me that the groundsel 

 overrunning a plot are a lot of gran' little weeds, 

 he knows that he means they are easily got rid of. 



Just as I write the fever of war and the fear of 

 invasion holds them. My gardener no longer tells 

 me contemptuously that he does not mix himself 

 up in them kind of things, but comes anxiously 



