Evidently the bigger salary the bigger profit to the whisky distiller was the rustic's theory.
I have forgotten how the story came to my ears, but I told it to Lord Morris, who much appreciated it.
Another Kerry story, not unlike one narrated earlier in this chapter, runs thiswise:—
Two men came to order a coffin for a mutual friend called Tim O'Shaughnessy.
Said the undertaker:—
'I am sorry to hear poor Tim is gone. He had a famous way with him of drinking whisky. What did he die of?'
Replied one of the men:—
'He is not dead yet at all; but the doctor says he will be before the morning; and sure he should know, for he knows what he gave him.'
Sometimes, however, the patient is quite as clever as the doctor.
A physician in Dublin had a telephone put in his bedroom, and when he was rung up about half-past one on a freezing wintry night, he told his wife to answer it.