The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume ThreeCarleton, William
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The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume Three
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
A general burst-of laughter followed this demand and ejaculation; and
Mat sat up once more in the settle, and examined the place with keener
scrutiny. Nancy herself laughed heartily; and, as she handed him the
full glass, entered into an explanation of the circumstances attending
his translation. Mat, at all times rather of pliant disposition, felt
rejoiced on finding that he was still compos mentis; and on hearing what
took place, he could not help entering into the humor of the enterprise,
at which he laughed as heartily as any of them.
“Mat,” said, the farmer, and half a dozen of the neighbors, “you're a
happy man, there's a hundred of the boys have a school-house half built
for you this same blessed sunshiny mornin', while your lying at aise in
your bed.”
“By the sowl of Newton, that invented fluxions!” replied Mat, “but I'll
take revenge for the disgrace you put upon my profession, by stringing
up a schoolmaster among you, and I'll hang you all! It's death to steal
a four-footed animal; but what do you desarve for stealin' a Christian
baste, a two-legged schoolmaster without feathers, eighteen miles, and
he not to know it?”
In the course of a short time Mat was dressed, and having found benefit
from the “hair of the dog that bit him,” he tried another glass, which
strung his nerves, or, as he himself expressed it--“they've got the rale
mathematical tinsion again.” What the farmer said, however, about the
school-house had been true. Early that morning all the growing and grown
young men of Findramore and its “vircinity” had assembled, selected
a suitable spot, and, with merry hearts, were then busily engaged in
erecting a school-house for their general accomodation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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