deepness in learning; for it's then he rhymes it out of him, that it
would do one good to hear him."

"So," said I, "you think that a love of drinking poteen is a sign of
talent in a school-master?"

"Ay, or in any man else, sir," he replied. "Look at tradesmen, and 'tis
always the cleverest that you'll find fond of the drink! If you had hard
Mat and Frazher, the other evening, at it--what a hare Mat made of him!
but he was just in proper tune for it, being, at the time, purty well
I thank you, and did not lave him a leg to stand upon. He took him in
Euclid's Ailments and Logicals, and proved in Frazher's teeth that the
candlestick before them was the church-steeple, and Frazher himself the
parson; and so sign was on it, the other couldn't disprove it, but had
to give in."

"Mat, then," I observed, "is the most learned man on this walk."

"Why, thin, I doubt that same, sir," replied he, "for all he's so great
in the books; for, you see, while they were ding dust at it, who comes
in but mad Delaney, and he attacked Mat, and, in less than no time,
rubbed the consate out of him, as clane as he did out of Frazher."

"Who is Delaney?" I inquired.

"He was the makings of a priest, sir, and was in Maynooth a couple of
years, but he took in the knowledge so fast, that, bedad, he got cracked
wid larnin'--for a dunce you see, never cracks wid it, in regard of the
thickness of the skull: no doubt but he's too many for Mat, and can go
far beyant him in the books; but then, like Mat, he's still brightest