394 Reviews. 
priest. The whole story is irresistible, from beginning to 
end. What follows may serve as an instance :— 
“All min, Larry,” says he to me, “all min has their wake- 
nesses ; and by the same rule,” says he, “you, Larry, and me has 
our wakenesses—and mine is cruiskeen lawn. And grate min,” 
says he, “has grate wakenesses;” so, says he, ‘‘as our wake- 
nesses is grate, a sharp logician would know what inference to 
draw from that primmiss about our noble selves; but on that 
point,” says he, “I’m silent, for modesty forbids me to press the 
conclusion. But now, as to loving one’s wife, sure Adam loved 
Eve, ‘the mother of all the living,’ and there can be no harrum 
in the loving Norah. I’m for the glass,” says he, “not for the 
lass. But sure that first-rate saint, St. Peter, himself, had a wife ; 
and St. Paul, may be, had one afterwards, for all I know, and 
small blame to him if he had. And the priests in the Old Testa- 
ment, from Aaron downwards, had wives ; and in the New Testa- 
ment they had wives ; and I can’t for the life of me see, Larry, 
why you couldn’t be a very good priest, although the holy fathers 
turned you off o-head of Norah. Sure your own father and 
mother were holy persons in wedlock, and it would be crule and 
scandalous to deny it? And why should’nt they be satisfied if 
you was as holy as thim? I say this, Larry. for your sake, my 
boy, for you see that the colleen dhasses has no shupayrior charm 
for me. Paullo majora canamus, as the divine Virgil says—there’s 
something I vally twenty times more than that, as the cock said, 
you remimbir, when he turned up the jewel on the dunghill, 
according to Aisopus. And would you be after hearing what 
that same liking is? ’Tis whisky, my lad o’ wax—whisky, the 
dew of the mountain, the bnghtness of the sunbame, the water of 
life. Och, did you ivver see whisky a-makin’, you jewel,” says 
he, in a burst of rapture—‘“ because, if you didn’t, you never 
seen the poetry of manufacture, and the joy of the world. First, 
you see,” says he, “there’s the steepin’ of the grain in a nice 
sweet boghole; and thin there’s the drying of it to make it into 
malt ; and thin there’s the mashin’ of it in hot water, a symbol of 
its futur’ fate in the scramin’ hot punch; and thin there’s the 
mixin’ of the wort; and thin there’s the pouring the wash into 
the pot—potikin—poteen ; and thin there’s the screwin’ on the 
lid with the beautiful crooked neck to it, like the swans in the 
Phoenix Park, only that they’re not a farthing candle to it; and 
thin there’s the worrum with ever so many miles of twists and 
turns in it, coils and raytikkle-ations and circumbendibuses, 
all cooped up in a nate tub; and thin there’s the lightin’ of 
the fire under it; I don’t think Polyphaymus or Promaytheus 
ivver lit or stole a fire with half the excitement it causes. Och, 
and thin, Larry, after the poteen boils, and the stame rises, to see 
it come dribblin’ out, drop, drop, liquid goold, out of the dirty _ 
