orted
Keogh.

Father Healy, most genial and delightful of men, belongs, of course, to
a much later period. I was at the Castle in Lord Zetland's time, when
Father Healy had just returned from a fortnight's visit to Monte Carlo,
where he had been the guest (of all people in the world!) of Lord
Randolph Churchill. "May I ask how you explained your absence to your
flock, Father Healy?" asked Lady Zetland. "I merely told them that I
had been for a fortnight's retreat to Carlow; I thought it superfluous
prefixing the Monte," answered the priest. Again at a wedding, the late
Lord Morris, the possessor of the hugest brogue ever heard, observed as
the young couple drove off, "I wish that I had an old shoe to throw
after them for luck." "Throw your brogue after them, my dear fellow; it
will do just as well," flashed out Father Healy. It was Father Healy,
too, who, in posting a newly arrived lady as to Dublin notabilities,
said, "You will find that there are only two people who count in
Dublin, the Lady-Lieutenant and Lady Iveagh, her Ex. and her double X,"
for the marks on the barrels of the delicious beverage brewed by the
Guinness family must be familiar to most people.

I myself heard Father Healy, in criticising a political appointment
which lay between a Welsh and a Scotch M.P., say, "Well, if we get the
Welshman he'll pray on his knees all Sunday, and then prey on his
neighbours the other six days of the week; whilst if we get the
Scotchman hell keep the Sabbath and any other little trifles he can lay
his hand on." Healy, who was parish priest of Little Bray, used to
entertain sick priests from the interior of Ireland who were ordered
sea-bathing. One day he saw one of his guests, a young priest, rush
into the sea, glass in hand, and begin drinking the sea water. "You
mustn't do that, my dear fellow," cried Father Healy, aghast. "I didn't
know that there was any harm in it, Father Healy," said the young
priest. "Whist! we'll not say one word about it, and maybe then they'll
never miss the little drop you have taken."

Some of these stories may be old, in which case I can only apologise
for giving them here.

Dublin people have always had the gift of coining extremely felicitous
nicknames. I refrain from quoting those bestowed on two recent
Viceroys, for they are mordant and uncomplimentary, though possibly not
wholly undeserved. My father was at once christened "Old Splendid," an
appellation less scarifying than some