er heavenly friends; the
conversation between a sapient publican, a friendly constable and
a group of dubious _bona fide_ travellers--such things were materials
for his insight or his fancy or his delightful humour. Often when he
returned in the evening full of his day's observations one wished
there had been a shorthand-writer present to take down what fell
from his lips. And just as it fell it would have been literature. He
was urged to write these things. But Leamy had not readily the will
or the power to compel his spirit when the favoured moment had
passed. He was mostly passive, like an AEolian harp, under the
visitation. Ill-health, too, extreme and distressing, burdened
him. He bore his trials cheerfully, and strove manfully to write,
especially in his later days when the power and the will seemed to
come to him just as illness tightened its hold. But he was sustained
by the most precious of blessings--a wife with a brave and bright
soul, who appreciated him, and had a heart as romantic as his own.
Their love, indeed, was an idyll, untouched by a shadow, through
illness and pain and hardship, to the hour of his death.

One ventures to wish that this little book may make his kindly Irish
spirit friends among a wider circle, and especially amongst the
children.

T. P. G.

FAIRY TALES.

PRINCESS FINOLA AND THE DWARF.

A long, long time ago there lived in a little hut in the midst of a
bare, brown, lonely moor an old woman and a young girl. The old woman
was withered, sour-tempered, and dumb. The young girl was as sweet and
as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the
whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer. The little
hut, made of branches woven closely together, was shaped like a
beehive. In the centre of the hut a fire burned night and day from
year's end to year's end, though it was never touched or tended by
human hand. In the cold days and nights of winter it gave out light
and heat that made the hut cosy and warm, but in the summer nights and
days it gave out light only. With their heads to the wall of the hut
and their feet towards the fire were two sleeping-couches--one of
plain woodwork, in which slept the old woman; the other was Finola's.
It was of bog-oak, polished as a looking-glass, and on it were carved
flowers and birds of all kinds, that gleamed and shone in the light
of the fire. Th