tmas morning."

I thought a good deal, and said: "It is a wholesome lesson. We have no
scruple in cuffing Jem Deady or Bill Shanahan; but we don't like to
tackle the big-wigs. And they despise us for our cowardice. Isn't that
it? Well, my dear fellow, you are a [Greek: tetragonos aner], as old
Aristotle would say,--an idea, by the way, stolen by Dante in his 'sta
come torre ferma.' In plainer language, you're a _brick_! Poor little
Bittra! how pleased she'll be!"

CHAPTER XIV

FIRST FRIDAYS

I notice, as I proceed with these mnemonic scraps from my diary, and try
to cast them into shape, a curious change come over me. I feel as one
waking from a trance, and all the numbed faculties revive and assert
their power; and all the thoughts and desires, yea, even the
capabilities of thirty years ago, come back and seem to claim their
rightful places, as a deposed king would like to sit on his throne, and
hold his sceptre once more before he dies. And so all my ideas are
awakening; and the cells of memory, as if at some magic _Sesame_, yield
up their contents; and even the mechanical trick of writing, which they
say is never fully lost, appears to creep back into my rheumatized
fingers as the ink flows freely from my pen. I know, indeed, that some
say I am passing into my second childhood. I do not resent it; nor would
I murmur even at such a blessed dispensation. For I thank God I have
kept through all the vicissitudes of life, and all the turbulence of
thought, the heart of a little child.

There is nothing human that does not interest me. All the waywardness of
humanity provokes a smile; there is no wickedness so great that I
cannot pity; no folly that I cannot condone; patient to wait for the
unravelling of the skein of life till the great Creator willeth,
meanwhile looking at all things _sub specie aeternitatis_, and ever
finding new food for humility in the barrenness of my own life. But it
has been a singular intellectual revival for me to feel all my old
principles and thoughts shadowing themselves clearer and clearer on the
negatives of memory where the sunflames of youth imprinted them, and
from which, perhaps, they will be transferred to the tablets that last
for eternity. But here God has been very good unto me in sending me this
young priest to revive the past. We like to keep our consciousness till
we die. I am glad to have been aroused by so sympathetic a spirit from
the coma of thirty years.

It i