ure there's plenty of fun and divarsion at sich places, but--healths
apiece!" putting the pint to his lips--"and that's all I say about it."

"Right enough, Tom," observed Shane Fadh--"sure most of the matches are
planned at them, and, I may say, most of the runaways, too--poor,
young, foolish crathurs, going off, and getting themselves married; then
bringing small, helpless families upon their hands, without money or
manes to begin the world with, and afterwards likely to eat one another
out of the face for their folly; however, there's no putting ould
heads upon young shoulders, and I doubt, except the wakes are stopped
altogether, that it'll be the ould case still."

"I never remember being at a counthry wake," said Andy Morrow. "How is
everything laid out in the house?"

"Sure it's to you I'm telling the whole story, Mr. Morrow: these thieves
about me here know all about it as well as I do--the house, eh? Why, you
see, the two corpses were stretched beside one another, washed and laid
out. There were long deal boords with their ends upon two stools, laid
over the bodies; the boords were covered with a white sheet got at the
big house, so the corpses were'nt to be seen. On these, again, were
placed large mould candles, plates of cut tobacco, pipes, and snuff, and
so on. Sometimes corpses are waked in a bed, with their faces visible;
when that is the case, white sheets, crosses, and sometimes flowers, are
pinned up about the bed, except in the front; but when they're undher
boord, a set of ould women sit smoking, and rocking themselves from side
to side, quite sorrowful--these are keeners--friends or relations; and
when every one connected with the dead comes in, they raise the keene,
like a song of sorrow, wailing and clapping their hands.

"The furniture is mostly removed, and sates made round the walls, where
the neighbors sit smoking, chatting, and gosthering. The best of aiting
and dhrinking that they can afford is provided; and, indeed, there is
generally open house, for it's unknown how people injure themselves by
their kindness and waste at christenings, weddings, and wakes.

"In regard to poor Larry's wake--we had all this, and more at it; for,
as I obsarved a while agone, the man had made himself no friends when
he was living, and the neighbors gave a loose to all kinds of divilment
when he was dead. Although there's no man would be guilty of any
disrespect where the dead are, yet, when a person has led a