ways a very healthy man, no cold ever
affecting him, and he could not bear the warmth of a shirt at night, but
put it under his pillow. He drank for many of the last years of his life
great quantities of rum and brandy, which he called _the naked truth_;
and if, in compliance to other gentlemen, he drank claret or punch, he
always took an equal quantity of spirits to qualify those liquors: this
he called a wedge. No man ever saw him spit. His custom was to walk
eight or ten miles in a winter's morning over mountains with greyhounds
and finders, and he seldom failed to bring home a brace of hares. He was
an innocent man, and inherited the social virtues of the antient
Milesians. He was of a florid complexion, looked amazingly well for a
person of his age and manners of life, for his use of spirituous liquors
was prodigious, a custom that much prevails in these baronies.'

Indeed, no one who was slightly acquainted with the characteristics of
the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kerry would suggest that total
abstinence was even to-day their predominant virtue.

It is the fashion to say that it is a good thing to be one of a large
family. From a financial point of view I am quite certain that the
reverse is preferable, and as I was the youngest of nine--two others
besides those I mentioned, James and Anne, coming to early demises--I
received as many kicks and cuffs from my brethren as I did halfpence and
affection from my parents. So, like Thackeray, as a child I sympathised
with Lord MacTurk who wished to cut off the heads of his brethren. Now I
have survived them all, and I fondly regret the sounds of voices that
are still.

But as I sit in my arm-chair and ruminate over the past, which every old
man must do in the intervals of reading the _Times_, going to the club,
or losing his money by careful attention to speculation, I have the
consolation of remembering that I did as much mischief as any other
child. To be a really good child means that the animal is a prig or
unhealthy. To-day I am fond of all my grandchildren, but the one I like
best is the one which proves himself or herself the naughtiest for the
moment.

This is a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young,
but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is
best to get the original sin out in the years of innocence.

CHAPTER III

EDUCATION

Perhaps the biggest wrench in life is going to school. It may not