"I want to go out, if you plase, sir."

"No, you don't, Phelim."

"I do, indeed, sir."

"What!--is it after conthradictin' me you'd be? Don't you see the
'porter's' out, and you can't go."

"Well, 'tis Mat Meehan has it, sir: and he's out this half-hour, sir; I
can't stay in, sir--iplrfff--iphfff!"

"You want to be idling your time looking at the gintleman, Phelim."

"No, indeed, sir--iphfff!"

"Phelim, I know you of ould--go to your sate. I tell you, Phelim, you
were born for the encouragement of the hemp manufacture, and you'll die
promoting it."

In the meantime, the master puts his head out of the door, his body
stooped to a "half bend"--a phrase, and the exact curve which it forms,
I leave for the present to your own sagacity--and surveys you until you
pass. That is an Irish hedge school, and the personage who follows you
with his eye, a hedge schoolmaster. His name is Matthew Kavanagh; and,
as you seem to consider his literary establishment rather a curiosity in
its kind, I will, if you be disposed to hear it, give you the history of
him and his establishment, beginning, in the first place, with