Handy Andy, vol 2 | Page 3

cushions out of my gig; for
there is no use in attempting to get the gig out till morning."
"Sartinly, Misther Murphy, we'll send for the cushions; but as for the
gentlemen, they are all on the other side."
"What other side?"
"The Honourable's voters, sure."
"Pooh! is that all?" said Murphy,--"I don't mind that, I've no objection
on that account; besides, they need not know who I am," and he gave

the landlord a knowing wink, to which the landlord as knowingly
returned another.
The message to the gentlemen was delivered, and Murphy was
immediately requested to join their party; this was all he wanted, and
he played off his powers of diversion on the innocent citizens so
successfully, that before supper was half over they thought themselves
in luck to have fallen in with such a chance acquaintance. Murphy fired
away jokes, repartees, anecdotes, and country gossip, to their delight;
and when the eatables were disposed of, he started them on the
punch-drinking tack afterwards so cleverly, that he hoped to see three
parts of them tipsy before they retired to rest.
"Do you feel your knee better now, sir?" asked one of the party, of
Murphy.
"Considerably, thank you; whisky punch, sir, is about the best cure for
bruises or dislocations a man can take."
"I doubt that, sir," said a little matter-of-fact man, who had now
interposed his reasonable doubts for the twentieth time during
Murphy's various extravagant declarations, and the interruption only
made Murphy romance the more.
"You speak of your fiery Dublin stuff, sir; but our country whisky is as
mild as milk, and far more wholesome; then, sir, our fine air alone
would cure half the complaints without a grain of physic."
"I doubt that, sir!" said the little man.
"I assure you, sir, a friend of my own from town came down here last
spring on crutches, and from merely following a light whisky diet and
sleeping with his window open, he was able to dance at the race ball in
a fortnight; as for this knee of mine, it's a trifle, though it was a bad
upset too."
"How did it happen, sir? Was it your horse--or your harness--or your
gig-- or--"

"None o' them, sir; it was a Banshee."
"A Banshee!" said the little man; "what's that?"
"A peculiar sort of supernatural creature that is common here, sir. She
was squatted down on one side of the road, and my mare shied at her,
and being a spirited little thing, she attempted to jump the ditch and
missed it in the dark."
"Jump a ditch, with a gig after her, sir?" said the little man.
"Oh, common enough to do that here, sir; she'd have done it easy in the
daylight, but she could not measure her distance in the dark, and bang
she went into the ditch: but it's a trifle, after all. I am generally run over
four or five times a year."
"And you alive to tell it!" said the little man, incredulously.
"It's hard to kill us here, sir, we are used to accidents."
"Well, the worst accident I ever heard of," said one of the citizens,
"happened to a friend of mine, who went to visit a friend of his on a
Sunday, and all the family happened to be at church; so on driving into
the yard there was no one to take his horse, therefore he undertook the
office of ostler himself, but being unused to the duty, he most
incautiously took off the horse's bridle before unyoking him from his
gig, and the animal, making a furious plunge forward--my friend being
before him at the time--the shaft of the gig was driven through his body,
and into the coach-house gate behind him, and stuck so fast that the
horse could not drag it out after; and in this dreadful situation they
remained until the family returned from church, and saw the awful
occurrence. A servant was despatched for a doctor, and the shaft was
disengaged, and drawn out of the man's body--just at the pit of the
stomach; he was laid on a bed, and every one thought of course he must
die at once, but he didn't; and the doctor came next day, and he wasn't
dead--did what he could for him--and, to make a long story short, sir,
the man recovered."

"Pooh! pooh!" said the diminutive doubter.
"It's true," said the narrator.
"I make no doubt of it, sir," said Murphy; "I know a more extraordinary
case of recovery myself."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the cit; "I have not finished my story yet,
for the most extraordinary part of the story remains to be told; my
friend, sir, was a very sickly man before the accident happened--a very
sickly man, and