“Well, ’tis better to make mistakes if some one benefits by them than to make no mistakes at all. I think I’ll go on counting the pebbles and leave you to find a philosophy for yourself,” said Micus.
“Well,” said Padna, “when a man can content himself by being foolish, ’tis only a fool that would be a philosopher.”
The Lady of the Moon
“’Tis a strange thing,” said Padna to Micus, as he sat on a boulder in his back garden, carving a dog’s head on the handle of a blackthorn walking stick, “that notwithstanding all the millions of people in the world, no two are alike, and stranger still that no two leaves of a tree, or blades of grass, are alike either. And while in a sense we are always doing something for others, ’tis ourselves we do be thinking about most of the time.”
“True, very true! And as they say across the water: ‘Every man for himself, and the dollar for us all.’ Or as the Devil said when he joined the police force: ‘There’s no one like our own,’” said Micus.
“Life is full of surprises, and the world is full of strange people,” said Padna. “And ’tis a good job that we are like the leaves of the trees, and the blades of grass, so alike and yet so different. If we all had the same tastes, we might have no taste at all, so to speak.”
“Speaking of strange people,” said Micus, “I wonder if you ever heard tell of one Malachi Riordan who used to sit in his back yard, every fine night, watching the reflection of the moon in a bucket of water, hoping to find the evening star with the aid of his wife’s spectacles.”
“I did not then,” said Padna. “But I met just as strange a man, and he sitting on his hat on the banks of the Fairy Lake of Lisnavarna, watching the moon’s reflection in the clear waters, and the devil a one of him knew that he was contrary at all.”
“Sure if a man was contrary, he wouldn’t know it, and if he was told he was contrary, he wouldn’t believe it, but think that every one was contrary but himself,” said Micus. “And I believe the Lake at Lisnavarna has a fatal fascination for people who are as sensible as ourselves. ’Twas there that Matty Morrissey, the great fiddler of Arnaliska, and the holy Bishop of Clonmorna met their doom.”