CHAPTER V.
THE REASON WHY FATHER TOM WAS NOT MADE A CARDINAL.
Hurroo, my darlings!—didn't I tell you it 'ud never do? Success to bould John Tuam and the old siminary of Firdramore! Oh, more power to your Grace every day you rise, 'tis you that has broken their Boord into shivers undher your feet! Sure, and isn't it a proud day for Ireland, this blessed feast ov the chair ov Saint Pether? Isn't Carlisle and Whately smashed to pieces, and their whole college ov swaddling teachers knocked into smidhereens. John Tuam, your sowl, has tuck his pasthoral staff in his hand and beathen them out o' Connaught as fast ever Pathrick druve the sarpints into Clew Bay. Poor ould Mat Kavanagh, if he was alive this day, 'tis he would be the happy man. "My curse upon their g'ographies and Bibles," he used to say; "where's the use ov perplexing the poor childer wid what we don't undherstand ourselves?" no use at all, in troth, and so I said from the first myself. Well, thank God and his Grace, we'll have no more thrigonomethry nor scripther in Connaught. We'll hould our lodges every Saturday night, as we used to do, wid our chairman behind the masther's desk, and we'll hear our mass every Sunday morning wid the blessed priest standing afore the same. I wisht to goodness I hadn't parted wid my Seven Champions ov Christendom and Freney the Robber; they're books that'll be in great requist in Leithrim as soon as the pasthoral gets wind. Glory be to God! I've done wid their lecthirs—they may all go and be d——d wid their consumption and production. I'm off to Tullymactaggart before daylight in the morning, where I'll thry whether a sod or two o' turf can't consume a cartload ov heresy, and whether a weekly meeting ov the lodge can't produce a new thayory ov rints. But afore I take my lave ov you, I may as well finish my story about poor Father Tom that I hear is coming up to whale the heretics in Adam and Eve during the Lint.
The Pope—and indeed it ill becomes a good Catholic to say anything agin him—no more would I, only that his Riv'rence was in it—but you see that the fact ov it is, that the Pope was as envious as ever he could be, at seeing himself sacked right and left by Father Tom, and bate out o' the face, the way he was, on every science and subjec' that was started. So, not to be outdone altogether, he says to his Riv'rence, "You're a man that's fond ov the brute crayation, I hear, Misther Maguire?"
"I don't deny it," says his Riv'rence; "I've dogs that I'm willing to run agin any man's, ay, or to match them agin any other dogs in the world for genteel edication and polite manners," says he.
"I'll hould you a pound," says the Pope, "that I've a quadhruped in my possession that's a wiser baste nor any dog in your kennel."
"Done," says his Riv'rence, and they staked the money.