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untackled the pony and led it into the house. Now they loosed the cotter pins in the axles and removed the cart's wheels. They reassembled the cart inside the house, tackled the pony to it again, placed the little gentleman—still snoring—back on the cart, and tiptoed away, closing the door behind them.
    In the morning, of course, the little gentleman awoke and found himself inside his own house, on a cart that could not possibly have fitted through his door—or so all logic told him!
    I have heard of that jape being practiced elsewhere in Ireland, but my father swore that he was the sole inventor.
    Mother was and remains a lady, by birth and by nature. She placed great value upon social grace (which my father, she said, possessed naturally). From her I learned never to keep my hands in my pockets in the presence of a lady. Mother also taught me that “a gentleman should contribute something of his own to every conversation.”
    She spoke candidly about things that fascinated me. My birth, she said, was headlong and energetic; the midwife exclaimed, “Look! He can't wait to get into the world.” I was born at half past eleven on a Thursday, and it being in Ireland and therefore half an hour west and behind Greenwich Mean Time, the true moment of my birth might be accurately categorized as noon on Midsummer's Day.
    “No more fortunate day,” Mother claimed, and my father said that it was lucky I came out at all; I might “just as easily have decided to stay in there, a grand comfortable place like that.”
    Mother described my birth as “a delight” and was always ready to tell me how she had counted my fingers and my toes. “And I went to count your teeth,” said my father. “Like I'd do to a foal. But you didn't have any”—and he laughed. She did not employ a nurse to feed me and did not, as my father had recommended, drink any liquor during my time at her breast. He said that was a pity, because he wished me “to get used to the taste—save a lot of time later on.” In that month, among our neighbors, I was the only one of five newborn infants to survive, a proportion slightly greater than was usual.
    However, neither parent had told me the full truth of my birth, which I discovered only many years later. My mother had had severe illness and frailty all through her confinement and, more dangerous still, my birth came a margin early. On that midsummer morning, a frightful thunder-storm broke out as my father set out to fetch doctor and midwife. He needed the carriage for their transport, and as he crossed the river bridge a mile from our home, lightning, attracted by the water, struck one of the horse's harness-pieces. The animal reared in fright and swung so violently that he dashed the wheel of the carriage against the pediment of the bridge and broke the red spokes. (Once, I was comforted and pleased to learn that very similar circumstances had attended the birth in Italy of Michelangelo.)
    My father untackled the stamping, frightened horse, calmed it, mounted it, and rode on to fetch the midwife, a woman almost too heavy for walking. I understand that she clung to my father on the back of the horse so closely that he said afterward he had not been so intimate with a midwife since the day he was born.
    Once I had come into the world—and both parents have said this of me—I showed no signs of ever wanting to leave it. My infancy grew more and more robust and I proved inquisitive and mellow, no trouble to my parents or their helpers. As a small child I developed a personality so clearly defined that I was soon known by name to the adults of the locality. Our workers (my father prohibited the use of the word “servant”) became my companions, and I was set, it seemed, for a regular life as my father's successor on the farm. But the world's circle did not turn that way.

    Life in Mr. O'Brien's surrounding environment was desperately poor. Existence for most Irish people was at that time brutish and