“Why, then, in regard of the dead calm that's in it, I can't exactly say—but, let me see—you're right, divil a doubt of it; faith it is, sure enough; bravo, Jemmy, who knows but all may go wrong wid the crops yet.”
“At all events, let us have a glass on the head of it, and we'll drink to the failure of the potato craps, and God prosper the aist wind, for it's the best for you an' me, Cooney, that's goin'. Come up to the house above, and we'll have a glass on the head of it.”
The fastidious reader may doubt whether any two men, no matter how griping or rapacious, could prevail upon themselves to express to each other sentiments so openly inimical to all human sympathy. In holding this dialogue, however, the men were only thinking aloud, and giving utterance to the wishes which every inhuman knave of their kind feels. In compliance, however, with the objections which maybe brought against the probability of the above dialogue, we will now give the one which did actually occur, and then appeal to our readers whether the first is not much more in keeping with the character of the speakers—which ought always to be a writer's great object—than the second. Now, the reader already knows that each of these men had three or four large arks of meal laid past until the arrival of a failure in the crops and a season of famine, and that Murray had three large stacks of hay in the hope of a similar failure in the meadow crop.
“Good-morrow, Jemmy.”
“Good-morrow kindly, Cooney; isn't this a fine saison, the Lord be praised!”
“A glorious saison, blessed be His name! I don't think ever I remimber a finer promise of the craps.”
“Throth, nor I, the meadows is a miracle to look at.”
“Divil a thing else—but the white, an' oats, an' early potatoes, beat anything ever was seen.”
“Throth, the poor will have them for a song, Jemmy.”
“Ay, or for less, Cooney; they'll be paid for takin' them.”