ve me wait
on you?" A lady of my acquaintance, who is a proprietress in County
Galway, is in the habit of receiving her own rents. One day, when a
tenant-farmer had pleaded long and unsuccessfully for an abatement, he
exclaimed as he handed over his money, "Well, my lady, all I can say is
that if I had my time over again it's not a tenant-farmer I'd be. I'd
follow one of the learn'd professions." The proprietress gently replied
that even in the learned professions there were losses as well as gains,
and perhaps he would have found professional life as precarious as
farming. "Ah, my lady, how can that be then?" replied the son of St.
Patrick. "If you're a lawyer--win or lose, you're paid. If you're a
doctor--kill or cure, you're paid. If you're a priest--heaven or hell,
you're paid." Who can imagine an English farmer pleading the case for an
abatement with this happy mixture of fun and satire?

"Urbane" is a word which etymologically bears witness that the ancient
world believed the arts of courtesy to be the products of the town
rather than of the country. Something of the same distinction may
occasionally be traced even in the civilization of modern England. The
house-surgeon of a London hospital was attending to the injuries of a
poor woman whose arm had been severely bitten. As he was dressing the
wound he said, "I cannot make out what sort of animal bit you. This is
too small for a horse's bite, and too large for a dog's." "O sir,"
replied the patient, "it wasn't an animal; it was _another lydy._"
Surely the force of Urbanity could no further go. On the other hand, it
was a country clergyman who, in view of the approaching Confirmation,
announced that on the morning of the ceremony the young _ladies_ would
assemble at the Vicarage and the young _women_ at the National School.

"Let us distinguish," said the philosopher, and certainly the arbitrary
use of the term "lady" and "gentleman" suggests some curious studies in
the Art of Putting Things. A good woman who let furnished apartments in
a country town, describing a lodger who had apparently "known better
days," said, "I am positive she was a real born lady, for she hadn't the
least idea how to do hanything for herself; it took her hours to peel
her potatoes." Carlyle has illustrated from the annals of our criminal
jurisprudence the truly British conception of "a very respectable man"
as one who keeps a gig; and similarly, I recollect that in the famous
trial of K