He has just as great a dislike to ould women as ever he had; that's why he don't trate his wife as he should do, as many think; and some say, when he gets in a passion,—as he will often, and rave and tear like a madman,—that the stick with the nightmare's head has been bating him for abusing his wife. Duck Davie has a good quality or two, but take him head and heels, I, for one, don't much like him. You'll say, may be, why do I employ him, then?—And I'll answer you,—because there isn't another tailor within ten miles of us: and moreover, if I was Paddy Doolan, and had the use of my limbs, when he abused his wife without a cause, as he did yesterday, and often before, I'd give him as fine a basting as he got from the witch's switch that day when he looked over his shoulder, and saw it standing behind him in the field.
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THE WEED WITNESS.
As the world goes, there's few places but have had somebody to blacken their good name, by robbery or murder, or crime of one sort or another; and there's few that hav'n't now, nor hadn't before now, but will one day or other, there's no doubt of it for as sure as the poppy grows in the corn-field, so will bad passions spring up in the hearts of some of us; and them that's the best in their young days, often turn out the worst when they're ould: so that, as somebody says, it's foolish to be spaking much in praise of a man's goodness of heart, and so forth, until the green grass grows over him, and he can't belie us by braking out into badness. It's a fine shew of potato-plants, that has but a single curly-leaved one among them; and we've rason to pride ourselves, that never within our own memory, or that of the ouldest people the ouldest of us now alive knew when we were little ones,—was there more than one man convicted (I don't say taken up on suspicion—I'd be wrong if I did) of killing, or burning, or shooting, or joining with White-Boys or Break-o'-day-Boys, or the likes o' that, for three miles every way from the door o' my house. To be sure, there's but few people in that space; but they're enough in number to have had black sheep among 'em. If you're uncharitable, you'll say, “So they have; but the rogues have had the luck not to be found out.” May be, you're right; there's many, to tell the truth, I wouldn't swear for. Much to our glory, however, the one that was found out, didn't draw the first breath o' life here; but came from far away up the country, after he'd done that which brought him to a bad end.
Johnny O'Rourke, as it's said, had a dacent woman for his mother; but, for his own part, Johnny was a downright bad one,—egg and bird. He got into such company when he grew up, as couldn't well improve his morals; and, by-and-by, he'd brought his ould mother—she was a widow—at once to death's door, and the brink of beggary, by his bad goings-on.