“Don't talk to me, Paddy Mulvany – don't talk to me! – where's the use of your talking, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, like a nest of magpies? Don't I know what I know? – Improvements, indeed! – answer me this: am not I fifty-two years and three months old – and having a fine memory, as well as much foresight – thanks be to God for the same – don't I recollect as good as fifty years? And what then? Why this; that all the trading-boats landed, on that out shore, safe and sound, whatever was wanted. – Don't tell me of the place being inconvanient, Paddy Mulvany: it's no such thing. In a peaceable village, building a quay to land coal! As if the people can't burn turf as their grandfathers did afore them! And timber! – won't wattles do for the cabins as well as ever? But mark the upshot of this – every potato, every grain of corn, 'll be bought up, and sent out of the country, when the English boats come in, and we shall all be starved; and neither man, woman, nor child, will be left alive to tell the story.”

“Why, thin, Mister Peter, sure it's yerself that sees the sunny side of a thing; ye've a mighty cheering way wid ye, ever and always,” said Paddy Mulvany, looking archly at his companion.

Sunny side! – Why, there's no sunny side, man alive, to see. When Wellington Bridge was built over the Scar, and sure they were talking of that bridge more than a hundred years before it was begun; – no good will come of it, says I, and I was right; it has now been built three years, and no road made to it yet; and, by the same token, it's cracked in the middle; I knew no good would come of it. Oh, what sarvice that money would have done the neighbours, if it had been properly laid out!”