animation of rural business--for Ned was sometimes a carman--on his
return from Dublin with a load of his own groceries, without as much
money in his pocket as would purchase oil wherewith to silence the
sounds which the friction produced--regaling his own ears the while, as
well as the music of the cart would permit his melody to be heard, with
his favorite tune of Cannie Soogah.*

* "The Jolly Pedlar,"--a fine old Irish air.

Honest, blustering, good-humored Ned was the indefatigable merchant of
the village; ever engaged in some ten or twenty pound speculation, the
capital of which he was sure to extort, perhaps for the twelfth time,
from the savings of Nancy's frugality, by the equivocal test of a month
or six weeks' consecutive sobriety, and which said speculation he never
failed to wind up by the total loss of the capital for Nancy, and
the capital loss of a broken head for himself. Ned had eternally some
bargain on his hands: at one time you might see him a yarn-merchant,
planted in the next market-town upon the upper step of Mr. Birney's
hall-door, where the yarn-market was held, surrounded by a crowd of
eager country-women, anxious to give Ned the preference, first, because
he was a well-wisher; secondly, because he hadn't his heart in the
penny; and thirdly, because he gave sixpence a spangle more than any
other man in the market.

There might Ned be found; with his twenty pounds of hard silver jingling
in the bottom of a green bag, as a decoy to his customers, laughing loud
as he piled the yarn in and ostentatious heap, which in the pride of his
commercial sagacity, he had purchased at a dead loss. Again you might
see him at a horse-fair, cantering about on the back of some sleek
but broken-winded jade, with spavined legs, imposed on him as "a great