respectable person who was born in a certain island, which is pronounced
to be the first gem of the ocean by, no doubt, impartial judges of
maritime jewellery. The stories which that person imparted to me
regarding his relatives who inhabited the gem above-mentioned, were such
as used to make my young blood curdle with horror to think there should
be so much wickedness in the world. Every crime which you can think of;
the entire Ten Commandments broken in a general smash; such rogueries
and knaveries as no storyteller could invent; such murders and robberies
as Thurtell or Turpin scarce ever perpetrated;--were by my informant
accurately remembered, and freely related, respecting his nearest
kindred, to any one who chose to hear him. It was a wonder how any of
the family still lived out of the hulks. Me brother Tim had brought
his fawther's gree hairs with sorrow to the greeve; me brother Mick had
robbed the par'sh church repaytedly; me sisther Annamaroia had jilted
the Captain and run off with the Ensign, forged her grandmother's will,
and stole the spoons, which Larry the knife-boy was hanged for.
The family of Atreus was as nothing compared to the race of
O'What-d'ye-call-'em, from which my friend sprung; but no power on earth
would, of course, induce me to name the country whence he came.

How great then used to be my naif astonishment to find these murderers,
rogues, parricides, habitual forgers of bills of exchange, and so forth,
every now and then writing to each other as "my dearest brother," "my
dearest sister," and for months at a time living on the most amicable
terms! With hands reeking with the blood of his murdered parents, Tim
would mix a screeching tumbler, and give Maria a glass from it. With
lips black with the perjuries he had sworn in court respecting his
grandmother's abstracted testament, or the murder of his poor brother
Thady's helpless orphans, Mick would kiss his sister Julia's bonny
cheek, and they would have a jolly night, and cry as they talked about
old times, and the dear old Castle What-d'ye-call-'em, where they were
born, and the fighting Onetyoneth being quarthered there, and the Major
proposing for Cyaroloine, and the tomb of their seented mother (who had
chayted them out of the propertee). Heaven bless her soul! They used to
weep and kiss so profusely at meeting and parting, that it was touching
to behold them. At the sight of their embraces one forgot those painful
little stories, and