"I like to stand up for the right," answered the old man. "And always was a good warrant to do that same," said Larry, in his most laudatory tone. "Will you tell us who's that forninst us an the road there?" asked the old man, as he pointed to a person that seemed to make his way with some difficulty, for he laboured under an infirmity of limb that caused a grotesque jerking action in his walk, if walk it might be called. "Why, thin, don't you know him, Mr. Coogan? by dad I thought there wasn't a parish in the country that didn't know poor Hoppy Houligan." It has been often observed before, the love of soubriquet that the Irish possess; but let it not be supposed that their nicknames are given in a spirit of unkindness--far from it. A sense of the ridiculous is so closely interwoven in an Irishman's nature, that he will even jest upon his own misfortunes; and while he indulges in a joke (one of the few indulgences he can command), the person that excites it may as frequently be the object of his openheartedness as his mirth. "And is that Hoppy Houligan?" said old Coogan, "I often heerd of him, to be sure, but I never seen him before." "Oh, then, you may see him before and behind now," said Larry; "and, indeed, if he had a match for that odd skirt of his coat, he wouldn't be the worse iv it; and in throth the cordheroys themselves aren't a bit too good, and there's the laste taste in life of his--" "Whisht," said the old man, "he is looking back, and maybe he hears you." "Not he in throth. Sure he's partly bothered." "How can he play the fiddle then, and be bothered?" said Coogan. "Faix an' that's the very raison he is bothered; sure he moidhers the ears off of him intirely with the noise of his own fiddle. Oh he's a powerful fiddler." "So I often heerd, indeed," said the old man. "He bangs all the fiddlers in the counthry." "And is in the greatest request," added Noonan. "Yet he looks tatthered enough," said old Coogan. "Sure you never seen a well dhrest fiddler yet," said Larry. "Indeed, and now you remind me, I believe not," said the old man. "I suppose they all get more kicks than ha'pence, as the saying is." "Divil a many kicks Houligan gets; he's a great favorite intirely." "Why is he in such distress then?" asked Coogan. "Faith he's not in disthress at all; he's welkim everywhere he goes, and has the best of atin' and dhrinkin' the place affords, wherever he is, and picks up the coppers fast at the fairs, and is no way necessiated in life; though indeed it can't be denied, as he limps along there, that he has a great many ups and downs in the world."