Nor could he be appeased all through the meal.
That leads me to relate the funeral sermon delivered by a clergyman on a lady who had died suddenly at her morning meal:—
'You all, dear brethren, well know the loss we have sustained in our departed sister. She was ever alert and kindly, ever bountiful though without extravagance. To the last she preserved her characteristics. On the fatal morning of her removal from among us, she rose as usual and came to the family breakfast-table. With no premonition of what was to come she took her egg-spoon and cracked her egg, an egg laid by one of her own hens. In another moment failure of the heart transferred her to a higher sphere. She began that egg on earth, she finished it in heaven.'
CHAPTER XIII
CONSTABULARY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS
An Englishman once asked me, if I could suggest any way by which all Ireland could be made loyal. I inquired if he thought the Irish constabulary a loyal body.
'Most decidedly,' said he, without hesitation.
'Then,' I replied, 'if you will pay every Irishman seventy pounds a year for doing nothing, but look after other people's affairs—a thing by nature congenial to him as it is—you'll have the most loyal race on earth.'
That Englishman went away thoughtful, but I had shown him the solution of one Irish problem which may be stated thus:—