nd, for the
simile--at least like wild colts, in such clusters behind the ditches?"

"A clusther of wild coults!" said Mat; "that shows what you are; no
man of classical larnin' would use such a word. If you had stuck at the
asses, we know it's a subject you're at home in--ha! ha! ha!--but you
brought the joke on yourself, your honor--that is, if it is a joke--ha!
ha! ha!"

"Permit me, sir," replied the strange master, "to ax your honor one
question--did you receive a classical education? Are you college-bred?"

"Yes," replied the Englishman; "I can reply to both in the affirmative.
I'm a Cantabrigian."

"You are a what?" asked Mat.

"I am a Cantabrigian."

"Come, sir, you must explain yourself, if you plase. I'll take my oath
that's neither a classical nor a mathematical tarm."

The gentleman smiled. "I was educated in the English College of
Cambridge."

"Well," says Mat, "and may be you would be as well off if you had picked
up your larnin' in our own Thrinity; there's good picking in Thrinity,
for gentlemen like you, that are sober, and harmless about the brains,
in regard of not being overly bright."

"You talk with contempt of a hedge-school," replied the other master.
"Did you never hear, for all so long as you war in Cambridge, of a nate
little spot in Greece called the groves of Academus?

"'Inter lucos Academi quarrere verum.'

"What was Plato himself but a hedge schoolmaster? and, with humble
submission, it casts no slur on an Irish tacher to be compared to him,
I think. You forget also, sir, that the Dhruids taught under their oaks:
eh?"

"Ay," added Mat, "and the Tree of Knowledge, too. Faith, an' if that
same tree was now in being, if there wouldn't be hedge schoolmasters,
there would be plenty of hedge scholars, any how--particularly if the
fruit was well tasted."

"I believe, Millbank, you must give in," said Squire Johnston. "I think
you have got the worst of it."

"Why," said Mat, "if the gintleman's not afther bein' sacked clane, I'm
not here."

"Are you a mathematician?" inquired Mat's friend, determined to follow
up his victory; "do you know Mensuration?"

"Come, I do know Mensuration," said the Englishman, with confidence.

"And how would you find the solid contents of a load of thorns?"

"Ay, or how will you consther and parse me this sintince?" said Mat--

"'Ragibus et clotibus solemus stopere windous,
Non numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati,
Stercora fl