with three pink antimacassars, a discourse by JEREMY TAYLOR and two months'
pay out of the pocket of McDougal, the organist, who seems to play cards by
ear. But Nemesis was lying in ambush for Murphy.

Three old ladies in Trim decided to get up a Tombola for the poor this
winter, and of course they sent Murphy a sheaf of tickets. As lotteries are
illegal they, being pious, hated them; anyway they decided to call it a
Tombola. They got the whole of Ireland to send them prizes, articles of
vertu and bric-à-brac, and any other old things that are of no use to
anybody, The carriage on the stuff and the printer's bill nearly ruined the
charitable ladies, but, as they said, the Tombola would pay all the
expenses, and if they could knock any more out of it the poor should have
it.

If you sold a dozen tickets you could keep the thirteenth for yourself, and
as Murphy, on account of his charity, was so popular he must have sold
hundreds. People seemed to have an idea that the raffle was for a gondola,
and they thought it would look beautiful on the pond in front of the Town
Hall. Unfortunately our local poetess confirmed this error by writing a
poem about it called "Italy in Ireland," which was produced in _The
Ballybun Binnacle_, with a misprint about the gondolier's "untanned sole,"
which caused a fracas in the editorial office.

Murphy explained to all concerned that perhaps his Italian was rusty, and
anyway his time was so taken up reading lottery-tickets and other
charitable literature that he never knew what it was all for. It was a
Tombola, however, this time, and not a gondola, they were subscribing for.
It was a kind of Italian lottery which the police didn't mind because the
prizes were not in money or anything of value, but just Old Masters and
brick-bracks. Murphy has such a way with him that the editor and the