John loved the horses as much as people love their children. When he came to us the horses were most all in their prime, but as the years crept by they aged and weakened together, and I was always amused, albeit touched as well, to see “Old John’s” fervent efforts to prove to the world that they still preserved all the nerve, vitality and fire of youth. And when the time came when the carriage-horses ought really to have been replaced, “Old John” was a sorrowful man and an anxious one; and at our faintest suggestion of a change, with frowning brow and trembling lips, the old man would march stiffly off to the stable, where he would assure its occupants that “they were mighty fine horses, and people ought to know it by this time.” Like most people of affectionate disposition, he was very fond of keeping anniversaries. All high-days, holidays, and birthdays were precious boons to him, but they came to be occasions of more or less anxiety to the family, owing to his utter inability to express his joy without the help of an explosion. It would seem that the comparatively harmless running up of flags, backed by explosions of varying degrees of heaviness, would be a sufficient outlet for any man’s joy. But John Hickey had still a “card up his sleeve,” so to speak, for the climax of his love and enthusiasm, the actual perfect flowering of his joy could only be attained by the aid of blazing tar. A great bonfire of wood was not to be despised, but tar was the material worthy of his attention, and when he had diligently sought for and found the most dangerous possible places, and had put in each a kettle of flaming tar, and could gallop wildly back and forth from one kettle to another, trying to prevent a general conflagration, he was the most perfectly happy man I ever saw. Not more than ten minutes after his discovery that my birthday fell on Saint Patrick’s Day he was at the house, asking if the ladies wouldn’t let him have some “grane material.” That seemed a very vague order--“grane material”--leaving such a wide margin for speculation as to what kind of “grane material” he meant. But the only information he would give was that he just wanted “grane material, dress goods or the like.”