bin
class, hangs up in the chimney a herring, or "small taste" of
bacon, and as the national imagination is said to be strong,
each individual points the potato he is going to eat at it,
upon the principle, I suppose, of _crede et habes_. It is
generally said that the act communicates the flavor of the
herring or bacon, as the case may be, to the potato; and
this is called "potatoes and point."

** This proverb, which is always used as above, but without
being confined in its application, to only one sex, is a
general one in Ireland. In delicacy and beauty I think it
inimitable.

"In this way lived Jack and his mother, as happy and continted as two
lords; except now and thin, that Jack would feel a little consarn for
not being able to lay past anything for the _sorefoot_,* or that might
enable him to think of marrying--for he was beginning to look about him
for a wife; and why not, to be sure? But he was prudent for all that,
and didn't wish to bring a wife and small family into poverty and
hardship without means to support them, as too many do.

* Accidents--future calamity--or old age.

"It was one fine, frosty, moonlight night--the sky was without a cloud,
and the stars all blinking that it would delight anybody's heart to look
at them, when Jack was crassing a bog that lay a few fields beyant his
own cabin. He was just crooning the '_Humors of Glynn_' to himself and
thinking that it was a very hard case that he couldn't save anything at
all, at all, to help him to the wife, when, on coming down a bank in the
middle of the bog, he saw a dark-looking man leaning against a clamp of
turf, and a black dog, with a pipe of tobacky in his mouth, sitting at
his ase beside him, and he smoking as sober as a judge. Jack, however,
had a stout heart, bekase his conscience was clear, and, barring being
a little daunted, he wasn't very much afeard. 'Who is this coming down
towards us?' said the black-favored man, as he saw Jack approaching
them. 'It's Jack Magennis,' says the dog, making answer, and taking the
pipe out of his mouth with his right paw; and after puffing away the
smoke, and rubbing the end of it against his left leg, exactly as a
Christian (this day's Friday, the Lord stand betune us and harm) would
do against his sleeve, giving it at the same time to his comrade--'It's
Jack Magennis,' says the dog, 'honest Widow Magennis's dacent son.' 'The
very man,'