I asked him jokingly what the O'Flahertie stood for.
To my astonishment he answered me gravely: "The O'Flaherties were kings in Ireland, and I have a right to the name; I am descended from them." I could not help it; I burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at, Frank ?" he asked with a touch of annoyance.
"It seems humorous to me," I explained, "that Oscar Wilde should want to be an O'Flahertie," and as I spoke a picture of the greatest of the O'Flaherties, with bushy head and dirty rags, warming enormous hairy legs before a smoking peat-fire, flashed before me.

I think something of the sort must have occurred to Oscar, too, for, in spite of his attempt to be grave, he could not help laughing.
"It's unkind of you, Frank," he said.

"The Irish were civilised and Christians when the English kept themselves warm with tattooings." He could not help telling one in familiar talk of Clumber or some other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever.
It is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true that life tries all of us, tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and exaggerates our powers.

Burns saw this when he wrote: "Wha does the utmost that he can Will whyles do mair." And the obverse is true: whoever yields to a weakness habitually, some day goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than he deserved.

The old prayer: _Lead us not into temptation_, is perhaps a half-conscious recognition of this fact.