have as much delight in mere living as their feathered friends.

The Magans were a light-hearted Irish family, whose cheerfulness seemed
better than eucalyptus or sunflowers to keep off the fever and ague, and
who made the most of the little bits of sunshine that came to them. Tim,
a strong-armed laborer, was brakeman on the Road. His wife, a hopeful
little body, a woman of expedients, was voted by her neighbors the
"cheeriest, condolingest" woman in Twinrip.

Good luck, according to her, was always coming to the Magans. It was
good luck brought them to America--by good luck Tim became brakeman. It
was good luck that the school for Connor was free of expense, and so
convenient.

Her loyalty to her husband rather modified the expression of her views,
yet she often expatiated to her eldest on his advantages, beginning,
"There's your father, Connor--I hope you'll be as good a man! remember
it wasn't the fashion in the ould country to bother over the little
black letters--people don't _have_ to read there--but you just mind your
books, and some day you may come to be a conductor, and snap a punch of
your own."

No doubt Connor made good resolutions, but when he sat by the window in
the school-room and looked at the dimpling, sparkling river, so
suggestive of fishing, or at the green trees filled with birds, he was
not as devoted to literature as a free-born expectant American citizen
ought to be. The teacher was somewhat strict, and it may have been in
some of her passes with Connor, the "bubblingoverest" of all her
youngsters, that she earned the name of a "daisy lammer."