The times., 1899-10-30
Mixed DinIert.

A case OF q peculiar nature was DfOuBnt
before a New York police court the other
/ day. 1t ought to be made the subject of
prayer by seumas MacManus and Ian
MacLaren at a specially appointed
meeting. 1t indicates the dangers
which may Iurk in dialect when two
varieties are mingled injudiciously. The
mixture is worse than the simultaneous i'm
/ bibing Of many kinds Of strong drink.
There was a wake in Seventy sixth Street
I and two Scotchmen Thomas McAllister
and Donald McDavish, went to it. the latter
/ clothed in kits. If the Young Mems Chris
tian Association of Trenton, n. J.. had
had jurisdiction over that part of New
/ York this would have never been allowed.
! That society does not approve of kits,
and made a fuss on one occasion because
the Caledonian Society wore them at an
annual ball And, for that matter, the as
sociation would never have allowed the
wake. But that is immaterial The wake
was held, and there were several Irishmen
there besides the corpse, which was also
Irish Whisky and beer were served.
Some hopeful souls have argued that the
salvation of the Irishman lay in his in
creasing appetite for beer. that being a
mild drink, and not wildly exciting to the
Celtic temperament. They have said that
the Irishman, on his diet of lager, would
become steady and even tempered, instead
of emotional and quarrelsome; that the
beer would temper his naturally mercurial
disposition into a mere pleasing vivacity.
But they did not count on the beer being
adulterated with Scotch whisky. That is
very bad
The two saotchmen drank, and the
Irishmen drank, and they all talked dia-
lect with rapidity. The effect must have
been something like the Tower of Babel
or the Worlds Fair. It is currently re-
ported that fragments OF dialect and win
dow glass were picked up as many as four
blocks from the place of assembly. 1t is
also said that no cats have been heard in
that vicinity since, but that several were
picked up, dead, in the alley when the
ash man came around next morning. The
Scotehmen had only been in this country
a little while and cne of them was a High
lander. He was OF the kind that William
Black writes about. The other was Of the
'Hoot, mon." variety-the kind that grew
in Thrums-the hard and nubby kind He
was the one who was responsible for all
the trouble. In the course of the evening
he told a story. 1t was a story with joke
at the end Of it.
Now, a Scotch joke is the kind of thing
which has to be taken more or less
seriously. It really ought to be taken off
by itself and studied with the aid of the
Westminster catechism and dictionary
1t was uukind of Mr.. McAHister, to huTl
such joke into the midst of a happy and
contented company of Irishmen who had
never been hit with anything harder than
a brick in all their lives. But they would
not have minded that If the pont of the
joke-when they found it-had not been
directed at them. 1t was a joke on the
Irish character. II took them a little
while to find that out, for the story had
been a long one, and some of them had
gone TO sleep while it was being told. But
when they did find it out. then there was
music There was simultaneous dive on
the part of seven Irishmen at once, having
for its objective point the two Caledonians
II was a glorious combat. It is said by one
or two of the scared spectators that the
dead Irishman came to life and took a
hand, but perhaps that was a misappre-
hension. Certainly he would have come to
life if he could. for the aght was some
thing stupendous. The result of it all was
that the man at the bottom Of the Difficult
ty-and of the heap-was extricated by the
police from under the Milesian mountain
on top of him. and carried of to jail, to
answer next morning for the offence Of
telling a Scotch joke in company Of
Irishmen. When he appeared in court his
eye was in Grape and his arm in a sling;
and there was not much left o. what he
had once called his nose. It was rather a
rough initiation, but it served to explain
to Donald McAllister that there are some
things which cannot be done even in a free
country.