For all this I blame the system rather than the servant; and it is quite odd how Biddy accommodates herself to every modification of system in every house she goes to. The only thing she cannot bear is to hear her country abused; even a jest at its expense will send the blood mounting to her cheek; and some years ago (for Biddy and I are old acquaintances) I used to tease her most unmercifully on that head. There is nothing elevates the Irish peasant so highly in my esteem as his earnest love for his country when absent from it. Your well-bred Irishman, in nine cases out of ten, looks disconcerted when you allude to his country, and with either a _brogue_ or a _tone_, an oily, easy, musical swing of the voice, which is never lost, begs to inquire "how you knew he was Irish?" and has sometimes the audacity to remark, "that people cannot help their misfortunes." But the peasant-born have none of this painful affectation. Hear Biddy when challenged as to her country: the questioner is a lady. "Thrue for ye, madam, I am Irish, sure, and my people before me, God be praised for it! I'd be long sorry to disgrace my counthry, my lady. Fine men and women stays in it and comes out of it, the more's the pity--that last, I mane; it's well enough for the likes of me to lave it; I could do it no good. But, as to the gentry, the _sod_ keeps them, and _sure they might keep on the sod_! Ye needn't be afraid of me, my lady; I scorn to disgrace my counthry; I'm not afraid of my character, or work--it's all I have to be proud of in the wide world." How much more respect does this beget in every right-thinking mind, than the mean attempt to conceal a fact of which we all, as well as poor Biddy, have a right to be proud! The greatest hero in the world was unfortunate, but he was not less a hero; the most highly favoured country in the world has been in the same predicament, but it is not less a great country. Biddy's reply, however, to any one in an inferior grade of society, is very different. "Is it Irish?--to be sure I am. Do ye think I'm going to deny my counthry, God bless it! Throth and it's myself that is, and proud of that same. Irish! what else would I be, I wonder?" Poor Biddy! her life has been one long-drawn scene of incessant, almost heart-rending labour. From the time she was eight years old, she earned her own bread; and any, ignorant of the wild spirit-springing outbursts of glee, that might almost be termed "the Irish epidemic," would wonder how it was that Biddy retained her habitual cheerfulness, to say nothing of the hearty laughter she indulges in of an evening, and the Irish jig she treats the servants to at the kitchen Christmas merry-making.