"Sure he'd fling money out be the handfuls if I'd let him. I told him if he done that the news of it would spread an' some of the wilder ones would demand it of him, an' wance I refused to go anny further till he'd promise to stop throwin' money away—half soverigns, mind ye.
"Ah, but he was the kind man, drunk or sober. The day before he left—an' he was here two or three weeks huntin' for his birthplace—he said:
"'Michael, I've drank too much, but it tasted good. After to-day not a drop I touch, an' me goin' back to America.'
"Sure, I hope he didn't, for he had a fine business of manufactures of some sort, an' he says:
"'Sind them along, Mike, when they does be old enough an' I'll give them good jobs. Only they must l'ave liquor alone.'
"Ah, a kind man he was an' a true American. Wance I met Larrd Kinmare, an' I took off me hat to him. 'Who's that?' says he. 'Larrd Kinmare,' says I. 'Why do you take off your hat to him?' says he; 'he's only a man like yourself.' I'll never forget that. Only a man like meself."
I asked this same jarvey if he would like to see home rule.
"Sure, better wages would be better."
There are many like him in Ireland, men of the practical kind, who would rather see prosperity than home rule, and who evidently do not believe the two are synonymous terms.
Perhaps a little more of this jarvey's talk will not be uninteresting.