collector would dare tell a complainant that if
he had paid his land-tax he would have
escaped the infliction of which he complained.
We see it broadly stated before the Commissioners,
as the habitual feeling of the
native population, that, when the aggrieved
lay their grievances before the Commissioner,
or the collector, they (the collectors)
refer them back again to the tahsildar, who
tells them to go and lodge their complaint
wherever they please, and continues his
cruel treatment with increased rigour.

SAINT PATRICK.

SAINT PATRICK'S Day in the Morning,
in our village, is ushered in by our amateur
band, who played the tune so called through
the streets for several hours after midnight,
scaring the slumbers of the more orderly
portion of the community, and accompanied
by a mob of the less orderly.  Whoever has
lived near the practising-room of an amateur
band knows that he might as well have a
menagerie for neighbour; and now, when they
burst out publicly, each making his brazen
utmost of noise, the effect is tremendous.
The clamour preserves some faint appearance
of unanimity only through the exertions of
two or three old militia bandsmen — the
civilised allies, as it were, of this regiment of
musical Bashi-Bazouks.  Several times the din
approaches; now up the street; now down;
blares under the window, and withdraws —
the drum's everlasting cadences vanishing
last and returning first upon the auricular
horizon.  In startling proximity or tantalising
remoteness, the band proves equally fatal to
sleep, and we gladly hear them begin God
save the Queen at a magistrate's house close
by; although these final throes are the most
excruciating of all.  The trombone has hitherto
grunted his two possible notes with perseverance
worthy of a better cause; but, confounded
by the slowness of the National
Anthem, he loses hold of that primary
musical element — Time; notwithstanding, he
bates no jot of bass, but blows the harder.
The big drum is even more vehement than
the trombone, and more undecided; he seems
actuated by various theories of accompaniment
in rapid succession.  The clarionets are
wheezy, the fife rambles, the cornopean is in
a wrong key, and is playing alternately like a
tornado and a penny-trumpet.

I can perceive by the moonlight that our
big drummer has already been doing honour
to the day.  Overcome with libations, he has
now laid his huge instrument horizontally on
the ground, and himself in the same position
beside it; and, in that difficult attitude plays
out his part.  The loyal tune comes to a close
at last, in a climax of discords; and as the
procumbent drummer declines to leave off,
his drumsticks are forcibly removed, he is
hoisted on a comrade's back, his drum on
another's; and, after a feeble cheer or two,
they all go straggling off— band and spectators
— some to sleep, some perhaps to get
drunk or more drunk.  The last lingerer is
boy Cheevo, a son of the gutter, beggar, idler,
probationary thief, who can sleep, if he tries, on
a doorstep or under a kennel-arch ; he lingers,
looking after the departing crowd with something
of the air of a host who has dismissed
his guests.  What is he thinking of, I wonder ?
Where will he go to ? There is no one in
the whole world to seek him, receive him,
blame him for being out late.  Some dull
hopes are his, connected with his victualling
department, from the dawning festival of
Saint Patrick.

Now it is the day itself.  Men and boys of
the Roman Catholic faith wear bits of shamrock
in their hats, and the little girls have
each a cross on the shoulder; that is, a round
of white paper three or four inches broad,
with bits of ribbon of various colours stretched
across it like the spokes of a wheel.  The
chapels are crowded at morning mass; and, at
the mid-day ceremonial, the chapel-yards are
filled with the overflow of worshippers, who
catch a faint murmur through window or
door, and stand or kneel outside with due
regularity.  A little later, the streets have
frequent groups of country folk in their best
attire — the girls with sleek hair, bright
ribbons, and gay shawls, the matrons with
snowy-bordered caps and cloaks of blue cloth,
and every man and boy of the rougher sex
garnished with his sprig of shamrock.  The
townspeople stand at their doors; acquaintances
greet each other loudly; and many are
the invitations to come to take a naggin, or a
Johnny, or, supposing you are one of the few
that still have the medal, as conferred by
Father Matthew, you will hardly refuse to
quaff a measure of temperance cordial — a
liquor, by the way, on which it is not impossible
to get drunk.

Every public-house counter is thronged
with noisy customers, so is the dark little
back-room, so is the room up-stairs — which
probably has an old chimney-mirror adorned
with two peacock's feathers, two nondescript
delft dogs on the mantelboard, and a jug of
primroses gathered by the children last
Sunday; on the walls a large rough woodcut
of Death and the Lady with verses below, a
portrait of Daniel O'Connell, and a row of
coloured pictures of saints, three inches by
one and a-half, glazed and framed in morsels
of sheet brass, and a bed with blue check
curtains in a corner.  In this apartment the
élite take their refreshments — which consist
of raw whiskey, whiskey toddy, temperance
cordial, a little porter and ale of bad quality,
and tobacco smoke.  How this and the other
pretty girl, who are being treated by a friend
or lover, can sit with complacence in so
stifling a climate, or bear to swallow even a
glassful of such flaming usquebaugh, is
difficult to understand.  Down-stairs, the
calamity-water (an expressive name for it)