It is customary for the heads of these old families to use the word "The" as a prefix to their names to indicate their rank, and I have seen letters signed in that way, without the initials of the writer. For example, "The MacDermott" is a barrister of importance in Dublin. "The O'Donivan" lives at Cork and retains a part of the ancestral estates. "The O'Shea" is a clergyman of the Church of England stationed at Manchester and makes much of his position as the head of the clan. "The O'Neill" is the Lord of Londonderry, and "The O'Connor" lives at Sligo--a brother of the late Sir Nicholas O'Connor, who was British ambassador at Constantinople at the time of his death. "The O'Flaherty" is a justice of the peace near Galway, and a man of importance. And members of other old families recognize the head of their clan in a similar manner, although it carries nothing but glory and gratification with it. "The O'Sullivans, the MacCarthys, and all the old families loike the O'Donaghues, are gone; played out, as ye moight say," remarked the oracle. "For tin cinturies the O'Sullivans ruled whole counties in Ireland, but they have lost their proid as well as their property, and are now contint to kape pooblic houses [saloons] and sit around complaining of the hard toimes. The whole country south of here is full of O'Sullivans. There's more of thim than of any other name. If anny wan were to sail across County Kerry in a balloon and cast out a bag of corn, ivery kernel would hit an O'Sullivan, but they are only proivates in the clan. The ruling line is extinct and no O'Sullivan now owns an acre of the old estates. Nor do the O'Donaghues; they're as poor as church mice, having lost all but the name and the spirit of the race. "Look at that grave there; it's filled with the bones of Black Jeffery O'Donaghue. They called him the Black Prince of the Glenflesk. He lived at Killaha Castle, situated five moiles from here and built on a rock standin' in the middle of a bog, and nobody could find the way but those who knew it. His spirit nothing could contain. He hated the English as no man ever hated thim before or since, and whin he saw an Englishman his temper would rise like the hair on the back of an angry dog. No Englishman ever came within soight of Killaha Castle and got home aloive. But Black Jeffery died in his bed after all, of tuberculosis; ye kin see the date on the tomb--1756, age 36.