they to-day will ridicule an O’Byrne, an O’Donnell, an O’Neill, an O’Sullivan, a MacCarthy, a MacMahon or Maguire, if they hear him say that such and such a Castle in Ireland and such and such a part of the lands of Ireland belonged to his people. It is from sneerers and slaves of that kind that the “stag” and the informer come; the Irishman who is proud of his name and his family and his race, will rarely or never do anything to bring shame and disgrace upon himself or upon any one belonging to him. Another odd character besides Carthy Spauniach used to travel my road occasionally. His day was Sunday. Every fine Sunday he’d be dressed up in the height of fashion, walking backward and forward this road that I had to walk to guard the crops from the birds of the air and the hens of the hamlet. This man’s name was Mick Tobin; his passion was in his person; he was a big, hearty, good-looking man, some thirty years of age; he fancied that every girl that would look at him couldn’t look at him without falling in love with him, and every fine Sunday he’d be walking that strand road between the Rock and Beamish’s gate, that the Miss Hungerfords and the Miss Jenningses and the other “ladies of quality” may see him as they were coming from church, and that he may see them. If I told Mick, after the ladies had passed him, that I heard one of them say to her companion, “What a handsome man he is?” I’d be the white headed boy with Mick. Mick’s strong weakness ran in the line of love and self-admiration. I have often thought of him, for in my wandering walk of life I have met men like him, met them in the line of Irish revolution, looking upon themselves as the beauties of creation, and imagining that the whole Irish race should look upon them as the heaven-sent leaders of the movement for Irish freedom. God help their poor foolish heads! I bring that expression from my mother, “God help your poor foolish head!” she’d say to me when I’d be telling her of the things I’d do for Ireland when I grew up to be a man. Ah! my mother was Irish. I saw her in 1848 tear down the placard the peelers had pasted upon the shutters, telling the people that Lamartine, in the name of France, had refused to give any countenance to the Dublin Young Ireland delegation that went over to Paris with an address. I’ll speak more about that matter when I grow older. John Dowling, of Limerick, met me yesterday in Broadway, New York, and told me I forgot “My Mother.” I looked interrogatingly at him. “Ah,” said he, “don’t you remember the poem that was in the schoolbooks about “My Mother”--you forgot to say anything about it in what you wrote in the paper last week.” “You’re right, John, you’re right,” said I; “I did forget her: Who ran to take me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, And kiss the part to make it well. My mother.” “And you also left out,” said he, these two lines in the “Signs of Rain”: