A solicitor who had his offices on the ground-floor probably paid the rent of the whole house; but the profits of verse-making are small, and a poetess, like meaner women, requires food, clothes, and fire.

Indeed, Miss O'Dwyer, no longer 'M.

O'D.,' whose verses adorned the _Croppy_, but 'Miranda,' served an English paper as Irish correspondent.

It was a pity that a pen certainly capable of better things should have been employed in describing the newest costume of the Lord Lieutenant's wife at Punchestown, or the confection of pale-blue tulle which, draped round Mrs.Chesney, adorned a Castle ball.

Miss O'Dwyer herself was heartily ashamed of the work, but it was, or appeared to her to be, necessary to live, and even with the aid of occasional remittances from Patrick in New York, she could scarcely have afforded her friends a cup of tea without the guineas earned by torturing the English language in a weekly chronicle of Irish society's clothes.