In nearly all the tents were gay young couples, dancing away as though for dear life--dancing not alone with their feet, but with their arms, their heads, and their merry, twinkling eyes. They were not all well dressed, or even clean, but they seemed happy and healthy, and merrily snapped their fingers at care. Everywhere there was laughter, and chatter, and feasting, and frolic; but, I am glad to say, we saw little tippling, and no quarrelling. It was very different in old times, when the wild fun of Donnybrook Fair always ended in confusion, drunkenness, and fighting. This happy change has been effected partly by the Temperance reform, and partly by the establishment of a strong and active government police. Now for a short story of Donnybrook Fair. THE LITTLE FIDDLER. Away toward the hills of Wicklow, some five or six miles from Dublin, there lived, not many years ago, a humble peasant family, by the name of O'Shaughnessy. Michael O'Shaughnessy worked in the bog--that is, he cut up the turf of the bogs, and piled it in stacks for drying--so making the peat which is the common fuel of Ireland. He was very poor, and with his wife and five children lived in a little low cabin, built of mud and stones, and thatched with straw. There was but one small window to this cabin, but then a good deal of light came down through a hole in the roof, left for the smoke to go out of--for there was no chimney. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy kept a few geese, and just before the door there was a little muddy pond, where they enjoyed themselves, and on the edges of which the pig wallowed, and dozed; except on stormy days, when he preferred to go into the house. Now, among the poor Irish peasants, the pig is a very important personage, and is treated with a great deal of respect, for he usually pays the rent. With Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, it was first herself and husband, then her son Teddy, then _the Pig_; then the girls, Biddy and Peggy and Katy; and then, our hero, Larry O'Sullivan. If she had known he was to be our hero, she might have put him before the _colleens_, (girls,) but not, I think, before the pig.