“Ah, Mickey, the thruth is,” the good woman would say, “we have no sich dancin’ now as there was in my days. Thry that glass.” “But as good fiddlers, Molshy, eh? Here’s to you both, and long may ye live to shake the toe! Whoo! bedad that’s great stuff. Come now, sit down. Jack, till I give you your ould favourite, ‘_Cannie Soogah_.’” These were happy moments and happy times, which might well be looked upon as picturing the simple manners of country life with very little of moral shadow to obscure the cheerfulness which lit up the Irish heart and hearth into humble happiness. Mickey, with his usual good nature, never forgot the younger portion of his audience. After entertaining the old and full-grown, he would call for a key, one end of which he placed in his mouth, in order to make the fiddle sing for the children their favourite song, beginning with “Oh! grand-mamma, will you squeeze my wig?” This he did in such a manner, through the medium of the key, that the words seemed to be spoken by the instrument, and not by himself. After this was over, he would sing us, to his own accompaniment, another favourite, “There was a wee devil looked over the wall,” which generally closed that portion of the entertainment so kindly designed for _us_. Upon those moments I have often witnessed marks of deep and pious feeling, occasioned by some memory of the absent or the dead, that were as beautiful as they were affecting. If, for instance, a favourite son or daughter happened to be removed by death, the father or mother, remembering the air which was loved best by the departed, would pause a moment, and with a voice full of sorrow, say, “Mickey, there is _one tune_ that I would like to hear; I love to think of it, and to hear it; I do, for the sake of them that’s gone--my darlin’ son that’s lyin’ low: it was he that loved it. His ear is closed against it now; but for _his_ sake--ay, for your sake, avourneen machree--we will hear it wanst more.” Mickey always played such tunes in his best style, and amidst a silence that was only broken by sobs, suppressed moanings, and the other tokens of profound sorrow. These gushes, however, of natural feeling soon passed away. In a few minutes the smiles returned, the mirth broke out again, and the lively dance went on as if their hearts had been incapable of such affection for the dead--affection at once so deep and tender. But many a time the light of cheerfulness plays along the stream of Irish feeling, when cherished sorrow lies removed from the human eye far down from the surface.