llions' hats, and a fiddler on
the roof playing the 'hare in the corn.' The inn was illuminated the
same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty
of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn't a
man in the mob didn't cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of
them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.
But it all went off well, nevertheless, for Peter was a clever fellow;
and although he liked money well, he liked popularity more, and he never
went any where special that he hadn't a public meeting of some kind or
other, either to abolish rents, or suppress parsons, or some such popular
and beneficial scheme, which always made him a great favourite with the
people, and got him plenty of clients. But I am wandering from the
record. Purcell came down, as I said before, special for Mills; and when
he looked over his brief, and thought of the case, he determined to have
it tried by a gentlemen jury, for although he was a great man with the
mob, he liked the country gentlemen better in the jury box, for he was
always coming out with quotations from the classics, which, whether the
grand jury understood or not, they always applauded very much. Well,
when he came into court that morning, you may guess his surprise and
mortification to find that the same jury that had tried a common
ejectment case, were still in the box, and waiting, by the chief
justice's direction, to try Mills versus Mulcahy, the great case of the
assizes.

"I hear they were a set of common clod-hopping wretches, with frize coats
and brogues, that no man could get round at all, for they were as cunning
as foxes, and could tell blarney from good sense, rather better than
people with better coats on them.

"Now, the moment that Mr. Purcell came into the court, after bowing
politely to the judge, he looked up to the box, and when he saw the dirty
faces of the dealers in pork and potatoes, and the unshaven chins of the
small farmers, his heart fell within him, and he knew in a minute how
little they'd care for the classics--if he quoted Caesar's Commentaries
itself for them--ignorant creatures as they were!

"Well, the cause was called, and up gets Peter, and he began to
'express', (as he always called it himself,) 'the great distress his
client and himself would labour under, if the patient and most
intelligent jury then on the panel should come to the consideration of