it is not at all uncommon to find in many illiterate Irish families half-a-dozen old volumes of whose contents they are ignorant, lying in a dusty corner, where they are kept till some young scion shall be sufficiently instructed to peruse them.  The names of these were singular enough.  One presented him with “The Necessity of Penance;” another with “Laugh and be Fat;” a third with the “Key of Paradise;” a fourth with “Hell Open;” a fifth handed him a copy of the “Irish Rogues and Rapparees; a sixth gave him “Butler’s Lives of Saints;” a seventh “The Necessity of Fasting;” an eighth “The Epicure’s Vade Mecum.”  The list ran on very ludicrously.  Among them were the “Garden of Love and Royal Flower of Fidelity;” “An Essay on the Virtue of Celibacy;” and another “On the Increase of Population in Ireland.”  To these we may add “The Devil upon Two Sticks,” and “The Life of St. Anthony.”

“Take these, Misther Denis,” said the worthy souls; “they’re of no use to us at all at all; but they’ll sarve you, of coorse, where you’re goin’, bekase when you want books in the college you can use them.”

Honest Phadrick Murray, in lieu of a more valuable present, brought him his wife’s largest and best shawl as a pocket handkerchief.

“Katty, sir, sent you this,” said Phadrick, “as a pocket handkerchy; an’ be gorra, Mither Denis, if you begin at this corner, an’ take it out o’ the face, it’ll last you six months at a time, any how.”

Another neighbor came with a cool of rendered lard, hoping it might be serviceable.

“Norah, sir,” said the honest friend who brought it, “sent you a’ crock of her own lard.  When, you’re makin’ colcanon, sir, or sthilk,* in the college, if you slip in a lamp of this, it’ll save you the price of bufther.  The grace ‘ill be useful to you, whether or not; an’ they say there’s a scarcity of it in the college.”.

* Sthilk is made by bruising a quantity of boiled Potatoes and beans together.  The potatoes, however, having first been reduced to a pulpy state, the beans are but partially broken.  It is then put into dish, and a pound of butter or rendered lard thrust into the middle of it.

A third brought him an oak sapling to keep in his hand about the purlieus of the establishment.

“We know,” said he, “that you’re given to arguin’ an’ to that thing you call logic, Misther Denis.  Now, sir, if you’re ever hard set in an argument or the like o’ that, or if any o’ the shthudjeents ’ud be throuble-some or imperant, why give them a touch o’ this—­a lick of it, do you see; jist this a way.  First come wid a back sthroke upon the left ear, if they want to be properly convinced; an’ thin agin’ afore they have time to recover, come down wid a visitation upon the kidney, My life for yours, they’ll soon let you alone.  Nothin’ puzzles one in an argument more than it does.”

“Ay,” said Denis, “that is what they call—­in the books the argumentum baculinum.  I accept your present, Roger; but I flatter myself I shall be a match for any of the collegians without having recourse to the argumentum baculinum.”