weight off of me.
Faith we have the lookout of a bad potato crop yet, sure enough. How is
the wind? Don't you think you feel a little dry bitin' in it, as if it
came from the aist?"

"Why, then, in regard of the dead calm that's in it, I can't exactly
say--but, let me see--you're right, divil a doubt of it; faith it is,
sure enough; bravo, Jemmy, who knows but all may go wrong wid the crops
yet."

"At all events, let us have a glass on the head of it, and we'll drink
to the failure of the potato craps, and God prosper the aist wind, for
it's the best for you an' me, Cooney, that's goin'. Come up to the house
above, and we'll have a glass on the head of it."

The fastidious reader may doubt whether any two men, no matter how
griping or rapacious, could prevail upon themselves to express to each
other sentiments so openly inimical to all human sympathy. In holding
this dialogue, however, the men were only thinking aloud, and giving
utterance to the wishes which every inhuman knave of their kind feels.
In compliance, however, with the objections which maybe brought against
the probability of the above dialogue, we will now give the one which
did actually occur, and then appeal to our readers whether the first is
not much more in keeping with the character of the speakers--which ought
always to be a writer's great object--than the second. Now, the reader
already knows that each of these men had three or four large arks of
meal laid past until the arrival of a failure in the crops and a season
of famine, and that Murray had three large stacks of hay in the hope of
a similar failure in the meadow crop.

"Good-morrow, Jemmy."

"Good-morrow kindly, Cooney; isn't this a fine saison, the Lord be
praised!"

"A glorious saison, blessed be His name! I don't think ever I remimber a
finer promise of the craps."

"Throth, nor I, the meadows is a miracle to look at."

"Divil a thing else--but the white, an' oats, an' early potatoes, beat
anything ever was seen."

"Throth, the poor will have them for a song, Jemmy."

"Ay, or for less, Cooney; they'll be paid for takin' them."

"It's enough to raise one's heart, Jemmy, just to think of it."

"Why then it is that, an', for the same raison, come up to the house
above, and we'll have a sup on the head of it; sure, it's no harm to
drink success to the craps, and may God prevent a failure, any how."

"Divil a bit."

Now, we simply ask the reader which dialogue is in the more