e drank it without a grimace. Etiquette and whisky! these things
have to be done, and one might as well do them with an air. He was in
love, he was grown up, he was a man, and he lived fearlessly up to his
razor and his lady.

From the book on etiquette he exhumed a miscellany of useful and
peculiar wisdom. Following information about the portage of knives and
forks at incredible dinners he discovered that a well-bred person
always speaks to the young lady's parents before he speaks to the young
lady. He straightened his shoulders.--It would be almost as bad, he
thought, as having to drink whisky, but if it had to be done why he
would not shrink from this any more than he had from that. He set
forth on the tingling errand.

Mr. O'Reilly was a scrivener, a husband and a father. He made copies
of all kinds of documents for a living. He also copied maps. It has
been said that scriveners have to get drunk at least twice a week in
order to preserve their sanity; but the person whose miserable
employment is to draw copies of maps is more desperately environed than
an ordinary scrivener. It was Mr. O'Reilly's misfortune that he was
unable to get drunk. He disliked liquor, and, moreover, it disagreed
with him. He had, to paraphrase Lamb, toiled after liquor as other
people toil after virtue, but the nearer he got the less did he like
it. As a consequence of this enforced decency the ill-temper, which is
the normal state of scriveners, had surged and buzzed around him so
long that he had quite forgotten what a good temper was like.--It might
be said that he hated every one, not excepting his wife and daughter.
He could avoid other people, but these he could never escape from.
They wanted to talk to him when he wanted to be let alone. They
worried him with this and that domestic question or uproar. He would
gladly have sold them both as slaves to the Barbadoes or presented them
to the seraglio of any eastern potentate. There they were! and he
often gnashed his teeth and grinned at them in amazement because they
were there.

On the evening when young Mr. O'Grady sallied forth to ask him for the
hand of his daughter in marriage he was sitting at supper with his
consort--

Mr. O'Reilly took the last slice of bread from under his wife's hand.
It was loot, so he ate it with an extra relish and his good lady
waddled away to get more bread from cupboard--

"Everything's a trouble," said she, as she cut the loaf. "Doesn't it
make