old and well known luxury of “potatoes and point,” which, humorous as it is, scarcely falls short of the truth.  An Irish family, of the cabin class, hangs up in the chimney a herring, or “small taste” of bacon, and as the national imagination is said to be strong, each individual points the potato he is going to eat at it, upon the principle, I suppose, of crede et habes.  It is generally said that the act communicates the flavor of the herring or bacon, as the case may be, to the potato; and this is called “potatoes and point.”

** This proverb, which is always used as above, but without being confined in its application, to only one sex, is a general one in Ireland.  In delicacy and beauty I think it inimitable.

“In this way lived Jack and his mother, as happy and continted as two lords; except now and thin, that Jack would feel a little consarn for not being able to lay past anything for the sorefoot,* or that might enable him to think of marrying—­for he was beginning to look about him for a wife; and why not, to be sure?  But he was prudent for all that, and didn’t wish to bring a wife and small family into poverty and hardship without means to support them, as too many do.

     * Accidents—­future calamity—­or old age.

“It was one fine, frosty, moonlight night—­the sky was without a cloud, and the stars all blinking that it would delight anybody’s heart to look at them, when Jack was crassing a bog that lay a few fields beyant his own cabin.  He was just crooning the ‘Humors of Glynn’ to himself and thinking that it was a very hard case that he couldn’t save anything at all, at all, to help him to the wife, when, on coming down a bank in the middle of the bog, he saw a dark-looking man leaning against a clamp of turf, and a black dog, with a pipe of tobacky in his mouth, sitting at his ase beside him, and he smoking as sober as a judge.  Jack, however, had a stout heart, bekase his conscience was clear, and, barring being a little daunted, he wasn’t very much afeard.  ’Who is this coming down towards us?’ said the black-favored man, as he saw Jack approaching them.  ‘It’s Jack Magennis,’ says the dog, making answer, and taking the pipe out of his mouth with his right paw; and after puffing away the smoke, and rubbing the end of it against his left leg, exactly as a Christian (this day’s Friday, the Lord stand betune us and harm) would do against his sleeve, giving it at the same time to his comrade—­’It’s Jack Magennis,’ says the dog, ‘honest Widow Magennis’s dacent son.’  ’The very man,’ says the other, back to him, ’that I’d wish to sarve out of a thousand.  Arrah, Jack Magennis, how is every tether-length of you?’ says the old fellow, putting the furrawn* on him—­’and how is every bone in your body, Jack, my darling?  I’ll hould a thousand guineas,’ says he, pointing to a great big bag that lay beside him, ’and that’s only the tenth part of what’s in this bag, Jack, that you’re just going to be in luck to-night above all the nights in the year.’