“_Daniel MacCarthy_, four shillings and six-pence,” says the priest. “That’s not much for a farmer who keeps three cows and sold two calves this year. I will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary gift.... _Simon Redmond_, seven shillings and six-pence; he might have given ten shillings, as he did last year. He is not what we should call a progressive man.... _George Roehe_, two shillings and three-pence. _Richard MacKenna_, one shilling and three-pence. _Denis Twoney_, one shilling and nine-pence. Against those who do their best I have nothing to say. _Michael Murphy_, fifteen shillings. Now, I ask, could not he have made it a pound? The pity of it! _John Coleman_, five shillings. _Daniel Clune_, five shillings. _Cornelius Nagle_, five shillings. One would think they had agreed to do it.... _Henry Townsend_, Esq., of Townsend Manor, three pounds sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber! And he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let a Protestant be more generous to your own church than you are.... _Harriet O’Connor_, one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she liked buying a new bonnet better than doing her duty. That is between her and her conscience. But I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t find it such a good investment.... _Mary Ann Cunningham_, twelve shillings and nine-pence. If everybody knew how to spare and how to use what they spare in the same way as this good lady, things would go better in this world and in the next, take my word for it.... _Colonel Lewis_, of Knockamore Villa, five pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one might think one lived in a parish of heathens when one sees that the heretics alone seem to have some regard for the church!...” The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with reflections more or less pungent, and interrupted now and then by a repartee coming from the far end of the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity of the attack; a general hilarity is then provoked without impairing in the least the reverence of the congregation for their priest or their church. This semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections, the daily masses, the baptisms, weddings and burials, is amply sufficient to keep the church, the priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of repair. Most of the parish priests besides, have the habit of “binage,” that is to say they often say two or three masses a day, at different points of their sometimes very wide parish. * * * * *