"The hivins be your bed, me darlin'," was the way an old beggar woman expressed her thanks. Sir Walter Scott says: "I gave a fellow a shilling on one occasion when a sixpence was the proper fee. "'Remember you owe me a sixpence, Pat,' I said. "'May yer honor live till I pay ye!'" When he was leaving the ruins of the Seven Churches at Glendalough, Lord Plunkett, his escort, whispered to the custodian: "That's Sir Walter Scott; he's a great poet." "Divil a bit," was the reply, "he's an honorable gintleman, an' he gave me half a crown"--when the fee was a shilling. Very often we hear poetic expressions from the most unexpected sources. As we were driving down to Ballyhack from Waterford, the jaunting car driver pointed at a mile stone with his whip and remarked: "The most lonesome thing in Ireland; without another of its kind within a mile of it." The common use of the name of the Creator is often shocking to strangers and seems blasphemous, but it is an unconscious habit. The word is constantly on the tongue of the poor and not always in a profane sense. You hear, "God bless you," "God prosper you," "Praise God," and similar expressions continually. One neighbor seldom greets another good morning or good night, without an appeal to the Almighty or the Redeemer or the Holy Virgin. "Howly Mother" is the commonest of ejaculations, but Irish profanity is always associated with blessings and not with curses. You never hear the anathemas that are so common in the United States. Nobody ever damns you; if the name of the Almighty is appealed to it is always for his blessing and not for condemnation. Everybody in Ireland does not speak with a brogue. It has often been said that the purest English is spoken in Dublin and Aberdeen, but that is true to a very limited extent among the highly educated and the cultured classes with whom strangers do not often come in contact. In some places the brogue is so dense that a stranger requires an interpreter. It is difficult to understand an ordinary remark. And you hear the brogue in the pulpit as well as in the slums. There is no form of speech richer or more musical than the brogue of an eloquent Irishman, and his natural gifts of oratory enable him to convey the meaning of his words to the fullest degree by his accent. I never heard the service of the Episcopal church read in a more eloquent and impressive manner than by a young curate with a brogue "that you could cut with a knife," as the saying is. There is nothing to compare with it except the "sweet, soft, southern accent in the United States." When you inquire where the Irish got their brogue, the answer will be, "At the same shop that the Yankee got his twang."