and many a happy day we spint with one another.  When we were childher,’ said he, turning to the rest, ’we were never asunder; he was oulder nor me by two years, and can I ever forget the leathering he gave Dick Rafferty long ago, for hitting me with the rotten egg—­although Dick was a great dale bigger than either of us.  God knows, although you didn’t thrive in life, either of you, as you might and could have done, there wasn’t a more neighborly or friendly couple in the parish they lived in; and now, God help them both, and their poor orphans over them!  Larry, acushla, your health, and Sally, yours; and may God Almighty have marcy on both your sowls.’

“After this, the neighbors began to flock in more generally.  When any relation of the corpses would come, as soon, you see, as they’d get inside the door, whether man or woman, they’d raise the shout of a keena, and all the people about the dead would begin along with them, stooping over them and clapping their hands as before.

“Well, I said, it’s it that was the merry wake, and that was only the thruth, neighbors.  As soon as night came, all the young boys and girls from the countryside about them flocked to it in scores.  In a short time the house was crowded; and maybe there wasn’t laughing, and story-telling, and singing, and smoking, and drinking, and crying—­all going on, heller-skelter, together.  When they’d be all in full chorus this way, may be, some new friend or relation, that wasn’t there before, would come in, and raise the keena; of coorse, the youngsters would then keep quiet; and if the person coming in was from the one neighborhood with any of them that were so merry, as soon as he’d raise the shout, the merry folks would rise up, begin to pelt their hands together, and cry along with him till their eyes would be as red as a ferret’s.  That once over, they’d be down again at the songs, and divarsion, and divilment—­just as if nothing of the kind had taken place:  the other would then shake hands with the friends of the corpses, get a glass or two, and a pipe, and in a few minutes be as merry as the best of them.”

“Well,” said Andy Morrow, “I should like to know if the Scotch and English are such heerum-skeerum kind of people as we Irishmen are.”

“Musha, in throth I’m sure they’re not,” says Nancy, “for I believe that Irishmen are like nobody in the wide world but themselves; quare crathurs, that’ll laugh or cry, or fight with any one, just for nothing else, good or bad but company.”

“Indeed, and you all know, that what I’m sayin’s thruth, except Mr. Morrow there, that I’m telling it to, bekase he’s not in the habit of going to wakes; although, to do him justice he’s very friendly in going to a neighbor’s funeral; and, indeed, kind father for you* Mr. Morrow, for it’s he that was a real good hand at going to such places.

     * That is, in this point you are the, same kind as your
     father; possessing that prominent trait in his disposition
     or character.