me, let alone a big baste of a whale's. Did you
ever see those dolly pegs they use in washing in
England?"

Somewhat confused, I asked what a dolly peg
was. " No—yes—no. I think not."

"To see how my wife slaves," said Doolan,
"while them ladies sits at home all day curling
their hair, not thinking of the dirt in their
yesterday's gown-tails, nor caring for all the grinding a
nd the elbow-grease it takes to clean them."

"What does that mean over the grocer's shop,
there," said I, pointing to a shop we were
passing, " Top Tay? What's top tay?"

"Top tay," Doolan said, with a long look of
pity at me, "why it means topping tay, of
course—tay as tops all other tays."

A drunken sailor, who had got in at a turn of
the road, now, by various marine eccentricities,
amused me, but disgusted Doolan.

"Skipper" (that was Doolan), said the sailor,
"let me get in the head (that was in front).
What is that woman dancing bare-legged in the
tub, there?"

"Oh, she's treading flannel," said Doolan.
"Bedad, if she had but a partner in a tub opposite,
there would be a pair of 'em."

"Have you been always on the road, Doolan?"
said I.

"No, your honour," said Doolan, "I was ten
years at Barbadoes with the Ninety-first. I
used to mind the colonel's horses, and ride them
to exercise. Many's the thing I've seen there
among the niggurs, particularly the Johnnie
Canoe riots, when they used to take to the bush
and slap at us from behind the trees."'

"I remember once, your honour," Doolan
went on, " I went out in the bush to cut supple
jacks, and before I had gone half a mile, what
should I see on a flat rock under a sand box-tree,
but a great brown snake with his flat head up
ready for me. So I makes no more to do, but
raps at him with my stick, and never stops
wopping till he's dead as Pilate. Then I puts
a bamboo in his jaws, and carries him home on
my back, eight foot of him."

Here the sailor became troublesome.

"Drunken baste, where's his manners?"
muttered Doolan.

How Doolan bit his lip and swore inwardly,
talking it out of the horse, which he flogged
viciously—how our maritime friend and brother
would stand up to see if the tackling was all
safe—how he wanted to drop anchor at every
whisky-shop—how he cried out alternately, with
the voice of a boatswain in a storm, " Belay!"
and " Reef!"—how he rolled and sang—how he
wanted to cry " Starboard!" at every turnpike,
and to board every rival car that passed us— I
leave for other chapters. At the next change of
horses he got down, and I left him fast asleep at
the shebbeen fire. My Barbadose friend now
resigned his throne to a brisk dare-devil Con-
naught lad, with a slight squint and a weak chin,
warping an otherwise handsome face. Tom
Reilly's peculiar hobby was a fondness for
practical jokes, and an admiration for O'Connolly, a
famed barber at Wicklow.

"Och! he has such a tongue," said Reilly;
"you should hear him. I do like a turn with
that barber; it bates cockfighting, and there's
sport in that, too. I'll just tell you a thing he
did only the other day. Bedad! it bangs
Banagher, and Banagher banged the divil, your
honour. I'm ready to burst when I think of the
fun of that barber. There were two countrymen,
with their sickles wrapped round in haybands,
comes into his shop, on their way home from the
harvest with those nasty foul people the English,
and says they, ' Barber, we want a shave for a
halfpenny.' 'I don't shave for less than a
penny,' says he, ' my bouchals.' But at last,
after a dale of higgling, he agrees, and both of
them sits down. The barber froths both the
chins and the two months' beards, and says he
to me, ' Tom, run for my Ballysader razor,' for he
kept this for tough jobs, and when he gets it he
shaves half the chin of one and half the chin of
the other. ' I fear I'll never level it now,' says
he. 'I fear it was not a man of business cut
your hair the last time.' Then, after dancing
round them and figuring about for some time,
he washes off the lather, whips off the cloth
from under their chins, and gives them the hand-
glass to see themselves in. ' Why, you've notched
us like forks; we're only half shaved,' cried both
of the reapers. ' That,' says the barber, with a
grin and bow, 'is what I do for a halfpenny. '
Well, you'd have killed yourself with laughing
to have seen the two Munster men look at the
glass, and then at each other, turning the
pence over in their pocket, then rubbing their
chins, till at last they out with twopence each
(twice the usual sum), and sat down and were
shaved like Christians.

"And this reminds me of the trick I played the
Dublin bagman at Galway once. There was a lot
of us at the Malt Shovel Inn, where the Clifden
coach, which I then drove for Bianconi, stopped,
and the loudest talker was a tailor bagman, who
you'd think was made on the eighth day; all by
himself he was, so swelling with his pudding-bag
sleeves and peg-top breeches. We fell a talking,
and he bet me a quart of ale that I could not smoke
a pipe of tobacco while he walked once round
the green. Well, I took care to pack it very
loose, and away he went; but I beat him, and
brought it all to ashes before he returned. Then
he must do the thing again, to give him his
revenge, for he swore he had been so sure of
beating me he had taken no trouble to walk
fast. I was determined to play him a trick, so
I challenged him again, and away he went. In
the mean time I sent out and got a rapping dose
of tartar emetic, and slipped it in his quart of
ale, that was ready frothing for the winner on
the bar. Presently in comes my gentleman as
proud as ninepence, puffing and blowing. ' Well,'
says he, ' have I won?—have I won?' ' Yes,' says
I, ' you have; there's your ale: drink it. I
am dead bet this time, anyhow;' and off he
drinks the whole pot, without resting his elbow.
Wasn't he sick; f'aix! his worst enemy wouldn't
have wished a better sight than to have seen him
holding his sides, as blue as the devil when St.