He handed me his long hairy brush, and a pailful of a horrible stinking compound, and I pasted up a bill the way I was born to it. "Sure," says he, "ye can paste bills with anny man that God ever put two legs under. 'Tis clear ye're a grand bill-poster," says he. "Didn't I tell ye?" says I. And with that I caught him a lick with the full brush across the face, so that the hairs flicked all round his head, and with a loud cry he turned and fled away. Armed with the pail and the brush, away I started after him, but my foot caught in the lap of the long coat I had on, and down I came, and knocked my nose on the ground, so that it bled all over me, and I had to go back to the inn. I took the rest of the placards, and the pail and the brush, and drove home, arriving very late. My brother Bill was in bed and sound asleep. Without waking him, I pasted the whole of his room with bills, "Vote for Longbottom, {135} the Friend of the People." I pasted them on the walls, and on the door, and on his bed, and on his towels, and on his trousers, and on the floor. Then I went to bed. In the morning he awakened me, wearing a pale and solemn countenance. "Charlie," said he, "there's some bold men among the enemy." "What do you mean?" said I. "They are great boys," says he. "Why, one of them got into my room last night." "Impossible," said I. "Come and see," said he. "When I woke this morning I thought I had gone mad." Upon the eve of the election, a man whom I knew to be a Fenian, came up to me and said, "I shall vote for ye, Lord Char-less. I don't agree with your politics, but I shall vote for ye." "And why would you?" I said. "You that's a Fenian, you should be voting for Mr. Longbottom, the Friend of the People, like an honest man." "Not at all," says he. "When ye go to the market to buy a horse, or a cow, or a pig, what is it ye look for in 'um? Blood," says he. "An' it's the same in an iliction. Ye are well-bred, annyway," says he, "but as for this Mr. Longwhat's-'is-name, he's cross-bred." When I was holding a meeting, one of the audience kept interrupting me; so I invited him to come up on the platform and have it out. "Now what is it, ye old blackguard," I said. "Speak out." "Lord Char-less," says he, "ye're no man." "We'll see about that," says I. "Why do you say so?" "Lord Char-less," he said solemnly, "I remimber the time one of your family stood for th' county of Waterford, I was up to the knees in blood and whisky for a month, and at this iliction, begob, devil a drop of eyther have I seen." The old man referred to the election of 1826, in which {136} Lord George Beresford was beaten by Lord Stewart de Decies, an event which was partially instrumental in bringing about the emancipation of the Roman Catholics in 1829.