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 children, Sydney and Olivia, drove up the ascent towards Fishamble street on a dreary winter's evening. Here, Mr. Owenson, who had quarrelled with his patron, Mr. Daly, was reconstructing a theatre. Everything was in confusion; they crossed a long plank that shivered over an open pit, where some remnants of velvet seats were still to be detected, and then, through mounds of chips and sawdust, they reached a large room.

"This will be the green-room," announced Mr. Owenson, "and in this room, my dear Jenny, Handel gave his first concert of the Messiah."

Sydney was all eagerness to ask questions, and among other things she wanted to know if Handel was a carpenter. After passing a terrible place called the Death Chamber, where the floor had given way, they found a large square open space, lit by a real moon, and, here, surrounded by pastoral scenery, they sat down to a supper of beefsteaks and punch.

The rats were only kept away by wild cats, "with stings in their tails," and Molly, the children's maid, was frightened in the night by her fellow servant exclaming [sic], "Are ye awake, Mrs. Molly? The rots (rats) are draggin' the bed from under me!"

The two little girls, after their mother's death, were sent to a French school at Clontarf, kept by a Madame Tersen. They were taken into a room