artfelt compunction.--But I return
thanks to the Great God, for more than eighteen months my lips have
not partaken of that infuriating beverage to which I was unfortunately
attached, and my habitual propensity vanished at the sanctified
and ever-memorable sign of the cross--the memento of man's lofty
destination, and miraculous injunction, of the great, illustrious, and
never-to-be-forgotten Apostle of Temperance. I am now an humble member
of this exemplary and excellent society, which is engaged in the
glorious and hallowed cause of promoting Temperance, with the zealous
solicitude of parents.--I am one of these noble men, because they
are sober men, who have triumphed over their habits, conquered their
passions, and put their predominant propensities to flight; yes,
kind-hearted, magnanimous, and lofty high, minded conqueror, I have to
announce to you that I have gained repeated victories, and consigned to
oblivion the hydra-headed monster, Intemperance; and in consequence of
which, have been consigned from poverty and misery, to affluence and
happiness, possessing 'ready rino,' or ample pecuniary means to make one
comfortable and happy thereby enjoying 'the feast of reason and the
flow of soul,' i.e.,--an honest, cozy warm, comfortable cup of tea, to
consign my drooping, sober, and cheerful spirits into the flow of soul,
and philosophy of pleasure. I, therefore, do feel I hid no occasion to
speak a word in vindication of my conduct and character. A conspiracy
in embryo, formed by a triumvirate, was brought to maturity by as
experienced a calumniator, as Canty, the Hangman from Cork, was in the
discharge of his functions, when in the situation of municipal officer;
and the hoary-headed cadman and crack-brained Pedagogue was appointed
a necessary evil vehicle for industriously circulating said maniac
calumny. Why did not this base Plebeian, anterior to his giving
publicity to the tartaric nausea that rankled at his gloomy heart,
forward the corroding philippic, and bid defiance to my contradiction?
No, no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English
ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he
could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter
the list of philosophical and scientific disputation with one who has
traversed the thorny paths of literature, explored its mazy windings,
and who is thoroughly and radically fortified, as being encompassed
with the impenetr