* Nothing can more decidedly prove the singular and
extraordinary thirst for education and general
knowledge which characterizes the Irish people, than
the shifts to which they have often gone in order to
gain even a limited portion of instruction. Of this the
Irish Night School is a complete illustration. The
Night School was always opened either for those of
early age, who from their poverty were forced to earn
something for their own support during the day; or to
assist their parents; or for grown young men who had
never had an opportunity of acquiring education in
their youth, but who now devoted a couple of hours
during a winter's night, when they could do nothing
else, to the acquisition of reading and writing, and
sometimes of accounts. I know not how it was, but the
Night School boys, although often thrown into the way
of temptation, always conducted themselves with
singular propriety. Indeed, the fact is, after all,
pretty easily accounted for--inasmuch as none but the
steadiest, _most_ sensible, and best conducted young
men ever attended it.

Having penned the above advertisement, it was carefully posted early the
next morning on the chapel-doors, with an expectation on the part of the
patrons that it would not be wholly fruitless. The next week, however,
passed without an application--the second also--and the third produced
the same result; nor was there the slightest prospect of a school-master
being blown by any wind to the lovers of learning at Findramore. In the
meantime, the Ballyscanlan boys took care to keep up the ill-natured
prejudice which had been circulated concerning the fatality that