[A laugh from the whole guard.]
“Well,” asked Mulligan, “what d'ye think of 'em now, Mrs. Pollard?”
“Why, now I finds 'em just loik ony other folk: they're civil and koind; and I'm sure the country is very foin and very cheap. Ecod! I don't care how long we stops here!—Good night, Pollard: Serjeant, good night—Good night, lads all.” And Mrs. Pollard in her pattens toddled off to her quarters.
“'Pon my sowl,” said Mulligan, “the counthry people in England are as ignorant as hogs about Ireland. They do really suppose us all to be outlandishers. Maybe its because we don't spake in their own hoppy-go-jumpy sort of lingo, that they think we are such bugaboos.”
“It's na' sa muckle o' that, neither,” observed Serjeant M'Fadgen, as he lighted his pipe. “I'll tell y' what it is: the English think that a mon is nathing at a' if he's been born out o' England.”
“Well, perhaps a great many think so,” said Corporal O'Callaghan; “but in the coorse of my life I fell in with plenty of Englishmen who were just as good as any other people, and as liberal in their feelings, as regards not only Ireland but every other counthry. I'll grant ye that they were dacent and well ejucated men; for I do certainly think the lower ordthers of England are just as ignorant and as pigheaded as any people on the face o' the earth.”
“'Deed, Corporal, I think there is na muckle difference in a' mankind when they're very ignorant—ay or when they are educated: as our Bardy says,
‘The man's the man for a' that.’”
“Yes, but look at the recruits that Sargent Brown and Jack Andrews brought over from Winchesther last September,” said Corporal O'Callaghan: “did ever you see such a set o' regular blutherumbunios in your life? the divil a one o' them could do the “right-left” dthrill for full six weeks! an' look at the Irish and the Scotch fellows! the great, raw, ugly, romikin divils that we got at the same time; why they could move a company off the parade in little more nor that time, as well as I could myself.”
“It's na use o' talkin', Corporal,” replied M'Fadgen, “the English sodgers are gude, the Scotch sodgers are gude, an' the Irish sodgers are gude; but the Scotch an' Irish enter the sarvice to beetter themselves, while the English 'list from misfortune: we tak it as a wife, for beetter or for worse, to live an' dee by it; but the English tak it only as sort o' reemedy; they dinna like it; but it's oor meat an' drink; and that's the reason why we make mair progress in learnin' oor duty. Yet if ye get an Englishman but fairly into it, heart an' han', he'll turn oot as gude an' as brave a sodger as ever bore a musket over his shouther.”