ne party, much upon the same
principle that the various little streamlets on the mountains around
them all run, when swollen by a sudden storm, into some larger torrent
equally precipitous and turbulent. Keenan, who was one of those
pertinacious fellows that are equally quarrelsome and hospitable when in
liquor, now resumed the debate with a characteristic impression of the
pugilistic superiority of his family:--

"I am right, I say: I remember it well, for although I wasn't there
myself, my father was, an' I often h'ard him say--God rest his
sowl!"--here he reverently took off his hat and looked upwards--"I often
h'ard him say that Paddy Keenan gave Mullin the first knock-down blow,
an' Pether--I mane no disrespect, but far from it--give us your hand,
man alive--you're going to be married upon my shisther to-morrow,
plaise God!--masther, you'll come, remimber? you'll be as welcome as the
flowers o' May, masther--so, Pether, as I was sayin'--I mane no offince
nor disrespect to you or yours, for you are, an' ever was, a daisent
family, an' well able to fight your corner when it came upon you--but
still, Pether--an' for all that--I say it--an' I'll stand to it--I'll
stand it--that's the chat!--that, man for man, there never was one
o' your seed, breed, or generation able to fight a Keenan--that's the
chat!--here's luck!

"'Oh, 'twas in the month of May,
When the lambkins sport and play,
As I walked out to gain raycrayation,
I espied a comely maid.
Sequestrin' in the shade--
On her beauty I gazed wid admiraytion,'

No, Pether, you never could; the Mullins is good men--right good men,
but they couldn't do it."

"Barney," said the brother of the bridegroom, "you may thank God that
Pether is going to be married to your sisther to-morrow as you say, or
we'd larn you another lesson--eh, masther? That's the chat too--ha! ha!
ha! To the divil wid sich impedence!"

"Gintlemen," said Finigan, now staggering down towards the parties, "I
am a man of pacific principles, acquainted wid the larned languages,
wid mathematics, wid philosophy, the science of morality according to
Fluxions--I grant you, I'm not college-bred; but, gintlemen, I never
invied the oysther in its shell--for, gintlemen, I'm not ashamed of
it, but I acquired--I absorbed my laming, I may say, upon locomotive
principles."

"Bravo, masther!" said Keenan; "that's what some o' them couldn't say--"

"Upon locomotive principles. I