d rivalled, in their paste brilliancy, the piercing brightness
of the wearer's eye. Having closed the door carefully behind him, he
walked towards the chimney, with a certain air of solemn and imposing
dignity that very nearly overcame all my efforts at seriousness; his
outstretched and expanded hands, his averted toes and waddling gait,
giving him a most distressing resemblance to the spread eagle of
Prussia, had that respectable bird been pleased to take a promenade in a
showy livery. Having snuffed the candles, and helped himself to a pinch
of snuff from a gold box on the mantelpiece, he stuck his arms, nearly
to the elbows, in the ample pockets of his coat, and with his head
a little elevated, and his under-lip slightly protruded, seemed to
meditate upon the mutability of human affairs, and the vanity of all
worldly pursuits.

I coughed a couple of times to attract his attention, and, having
succeeded in catching his eye, I begged, in my blandest imaginable
voice, to know where I was.

"Where are ye, is it?" said he, repeating my question in a tone of the
most sharp and querulous intonation, to which not even his brogue could
lend one touch of softness,--"where are ye? and where would you like
to be? or where would any one be that was disgracing himself, or
blackguarding about the streets till he got his head cut and his clothes
torn, but in Master Phil's room: devil other company it's used to. Well,
well! It is more like a watchhouse nor a gentleman's parlour, this
same room. It's little his father, the Jidge"--here he crossed himself
piously--"it is little he thought the company his son would be keeping;
but it is no matter. I gave him warning last Tuesday, and with the
blessin' o' God----"

The remainder of this speech was lost in a low muttering grumble, which
I afterwards learnt was his usual manner of closing an oration. A few
broken and indistinct phrases being only audible, such as--"Sarve you
right"--"Fifty years in the family"--"Slaving like a negur"--"Oh, the
Turks! the haythins!"

Having waited what I deemed a reasonable time for his honest indignation
to evaporate, I made another effort to ascertain who my host might be.

"Would you favour me," said I, in a tone still more insinuating, "with
the name of----"

"It's my name, ye want? Oh, sorrow bit I am ashamed of it! Little as you
think of me, Cornelius Delany is as good a warrant for family as many a
one of the dirty spalpeens about the Coort, t