SUMMER. 69 



the dam, as genial an old fellow as ever wrapped up his throat in a white 

 stock. And I might almost continue the list indefinitely. But there is 

 one I must especially mention ; and, now that I think of it, he really 

 should have headed the list, for he stands alone — or at least he does 

 sometimes. If you are in search of the embodiment of typical Erin, you 

 need go no farther ; here he is. This individual represents another 

 nationality which swells the population of Hometown — the hard-working 

 laborers who toil in the great factory down in the glen, called " Satan's 

 Misery." The above personage is one of the best-hearted creatures in 

 the town ; but it is the old story, and the world to him is enclosed in 

 the compass of a barrel-hoop. When last I saw him he was in an evi- 

 dent decline, but as I put my finger on his wrist I could still feel the 

 pulsations of the whiskey coursing through his veins. 



" Look here, my good fellow," I said to him one day, " why don't you 

 taper off a little ? If you keep on in this way, you'll be in your grave in 

 less than a month. How would you like that?" 



" Arrah, begorra," he replied, with a look of hopeful resignation, " if I 

 cud awnly be shure o' me gude skvare dthrink in the other wurrld, oi 

 wudn't moind." 



The record of a single evening spent in the village store, with its 

 rural jargon and homespun yarns, its odd vernacular and rustic gossip, 

 would make a volume as rare and unique as the characters it would 

 depict. 



The store itself is a matchless picture in its way, and for variety in 

 accessory is as rich as could be wished for. The low, murky ceiling, hung 

 with all manner of earthly goods — scythes and rakes, boots and pails, in 

 pendulous array ; bottles and boxes, brooms and breast-pins, are here — in 

 short, everything that heart could wish or thought suggest, from speckled 

 calicoes to seven-cent sugar, or from a three-tined fork to a goose-yoke. 

 Evening after evening, for an hour or so, I was tempted thither, until I 

 found the week had gone. Sunday came again — Sunday in New Eng- 

 land. The old bell swung on its wheel in the belfry, ringing out its call 

 to devotion, and ere the echo had died in the recesses of the mountain 

 beyond the still atmosphere reverberated with an answering peal from 

 the little sister church in the valley below, as the scattered groups with 

 strolling steps wend their way to " meeting," and the gay loads from 

 Newborough go flitting by on the accustomed Sunday drive. 



Monday dawned on Hometown. It found me up and doing. I had 



