From Irish Idylls, 1894 The widow M'Gurk has managed her own fann of more than half an acre ever since her husband's death, which took place one spring several years ago, just when he was about to get in his seed potatoes. They weighed very much on his mind during his last hours, for he gravely doubted the success of his wife's unsupervised operations, and how was she going to live at all if the crop failed on her ? She tried to pacify him by assuring him that the ground was frozen as hard as bullets, and all the men in Connaught couldn't work a stroke if they were outside in the field ; but he was not deceived, and would have got up if he had been able to stand on his feet " Pitaties " were all that day the burden of so much discourse as is possible to anyone with double pneumonia, which