ss" herself, in which the tawdriest
calico patterns served to display the taste of the rural sempstress,
and stimulated the rising generation to feats of needlework. The car
was always provided with a driver, who took such care upon himself "for
a rayson he had:" he was almost universally what is called in Ireland
"a clane boy," that is to say, a well made, good-looking young fellow,
whose eyes were not put into his head for nothing; and these same eyes
might be seen wandering backwards occasionally from his immediate
charge, the dumb baste, to "take a squint" at some, or maybe one, of
his passengers. This explains "the rayson he had" for becoming driver.
Sometimes he sat on the crupper of the horse, resting his feet on the
shafts of the car, and bending down his head to say something tindher
to the colleen that sat next him, totally negligent of his duty as
guide. Sometimes when the girl he wanted to be sweet on was seated at
the back of the car, this relieved the horse from the additional
burthen of his driver, and the clane boy would leave the horse's head
and fall in the rear to deludher the craythur, depending on the
occasional "hup" or "wo" for the guidance of the baste, when a too near
proximity to the dyke by the road side warned him of the necessity of
his interference. Sometimes he was called to his duty by the open
remonstrance of either the mother or the aunt, or maybe a mischievous
cousin, as thus: "Why then, Dinny, what are you about at all at all?
God betune me and harm, if you warn't within an inch o' puttin' us all
in the gripe o' the ditch;--arrah, lave off your gostherin there, and
mind the horse, will you; a purty thing it 'ud be if my bones was bruk;
what are you doin, there at all at the back o' the car, when it's at
the baste's head you ought to be?"

"Arrah sure, the baste knows the way herself."

"Faix, I b'lieve so, for it's little behowlden to you she is for
showin' her. Augh!!--murther!!!--there we are in the gripe a'most."

"Lave off your screeching, can't you, and be quite. Sure the poor
craythur only just wint over to get a mouthful o' the grass by the side
o' the ditch."

"What business has she to be atin' now?"

"Bekase she's hungry, I suppose;--and why isn't she fed betther?"

"Bekase rogues stales her oats, Dinny. I seen you in the stable by the
same token yistherday."

"Sure enough, ma'am, for I wint there to look for my cowlt that was
missin'."

"I thought it was the