inces and people, victors and vanquished,
we 're waves of the sea, rolling over and over, and calling it life!
There's no life save the eternal. Father Boyle's got the truth. Flesh is
less than grass, my sons; 'tis the shadow that crosses the grass. I love
the grass. I could sit and watch grassblades for hours. I love an old
turf mound, where the grey grass nods and seems to know the wind and have
a whisper with it, of ancient times maybe and most like; about the big
chief lying underneath in the last must of his bones that a breath of air
would scatter. They just keep their skeleton shape as they are; for the
turf mound protects them from troubles: 'tis the nurse to that delicate
old infant!--Waves of the sea, did I say? We're wash in a hog-trough for
Father Saturn to devour; big chief and suckling babe, we all go into it,
calling it life! And what hope have we of reading the mystery? All we can
see is the straining of the old fellow's hams to push his old snout
deeper into the gobble, and the ridiculous curl of a tail totally devoid
of expression! You'll observe that gluttons have no feature; they're jaws
and hindquarters; which is the beginning and end of 'm; and so you may
say to Time for his dealing with us: so let it be a lesson to you not to
bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest. He understands it,
and why? because he was told. There 's harmony in his elocution, and
there's none in the modern drivel about where we're going and what we
came out of. No wonder they call it an age of despair, when you see the
big wigs filing up and down the thoroughfares with a great advertisement
board on their shoulders, proclaiming no information to the multitude,
but a blank note of interrogation addressed to Providence, as if an
answer from above would be vouchsafed to their impudence! They haven't
the first principles of good manners. And some of 'm in a rage bawl the
answer for themselves. Hear that! No, Phil; No, Pat, no: devotion's good
policy.--You're not drinking! Are you both of ye asleep? why do ye leave
me to drone away like this, when it 's conversation I want, as in the
days of our first parents, before the fig-leaf?--and you might have that
for scroll and figure on the social banner of the hypocritical Saxon,
who's a gormandising animal behind his decency, and nearer to the
Arch-devourer Time than anything I can imagine: except that with a little
exertion you can elude him. The whisky you've got between y