'I believe, ma'am,' says James, 'you were an original shareholder in the
Provincial Bank. The shares are now quoted at eighty and they pay six
per cent. That is very much like twenty-one per cent. on the original
capital.'

'I am not a clever man like you at making these calculations,' replies
the lady; 'I have higher and holier things to think about.'

'Don't say that again to me, ma'am,' says he. 'I put my money into
farms, and I get five per cent, from a grumbling and unsatisfactory set
of tenants. And what are you getting? Twenty-one per cent. in this world
and salvation in the next. It's the most damnable interest I ever heard
tell of, either in this world or any other.'

Yet another tale about him.

He had received an unconscionable bill of costs from an attorney, and
happening to meet a Roman Catholic bishop in Cork, he asked him if an
attorney could ever be saved.

'Why not? Even an extortioner can be if he make ample restitution in his
life-time, and dies fortified with the rites of the Church.'

'May be so, my lord,' replied Sir James, 'you know more about these
things than I do, but if it is as you say, you are taking a confounded
amount of unnecessary trouble about the rest of us.'

The bishop was not a bit disconcerted.

'I am an honest labourer striving to be worthy of my hire,' he