From which it may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of
common-sense.
Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and
sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father,
whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England
are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had
sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of
Killaloe,--patients, probably, of Dr. Duggin, of Castle Connell, a
learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to
make head against Dr. Finn,--who declared that old Finn would not be
sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship.
Mrs. Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants,
and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his
Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn
Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father's secret wishes on that
subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success
in which his religion was no bar; and he there achieved a sort of
distinction which was both easy and pleasant, and which, making
its way down to Killaloe, assisted in engendering those ideas as
to swanhood of which maternal and sisterly minds are so sweetly
susceptible.
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