The folk tale that follows was told me, not by a Dublin jarvey, but by a Dublin artist whose command of the right word was as great as his command of his brush.
He regaled me with many stories of Irishmen and Ireland and never let pass a chance to abuse the English in the most amusingly good-natured way. To him the English as a race were a hateful, selfish lot. Most of the Englishmen he knew personally were exceptions to this rule, but he was convinced that the average Englishman was a man who was nurtured in selfishness and hypocritical puritanism.
But this is far afield from his story of the first looking glass.
Once upon a time (said my friend) a man was out walking by the edge of the ocean and he picked up a looking glass.
Into the glass he looked and he saw there the face of himself.
"Oh," said he, "'tis a picture of my father," and he took it to his cabin and hung it on the wall. And often he would go to look at it, and always he said, "'Tis a picture of my father."
But one day he took to himself a wife, and when she went to the mirror and looked in she said:
"I thought you said this was a picture of your father. Sure, it is a picture of an ugly, red-headed woman. Who is she?"
"What have ye?" said the man. "Step away and let me to it."
So she stepped away and let him to it and he looked at it again.