ife is_." Oh, had he said, "what _death is_," he would have
spoken the truth.

I accompanied him willingly, though I saw at a glance that he had
already been drinking. Crowds of people were going in the direction we
took. For some days past I had heard the neighbours talking of the
fair. I now knew that we were bound there. My mother had never allowed
me to go to the place, so I had no notion what it was like. I expected
to see something very grand and very beautiful--I could not tell what.
I pushed on into the crowd with my father as eagerly as any one,
thinking that we should arrive at the fair at last. I did not know that
we were already in the middle of it. I remember, however, having a
confused sight of booths, and canvas theatres, and actors in fine
clothes strutting about and spouting and trumpeting and drumming; of
rope-dancers and tumblers with painted faces; and doctors in gilded
chariots selling all sorts of wonderful remedies for every possible
complaint; and the horsemanship, with men leaping through hoops and
striding over six steeds or more at full gallop; and the gingerbread
stalls, and toy shops, and similar wonders; but what was bought and sold
at the fair of use to any one I never heard.

My father had taken me round to several of the shows I have spoken of:
when he entered a drinking-booth, and set himself down with me on his
knee, among a number of men who seemed to be drinking hard. Their
example stimulated him to drink harder than ever, and in a short time
his senses completely left him. As, however, even though the worse
liquor, he was peaceable in his disposition, instead of sallying forth
as many did in search of adventures, he laid himself down on the ground
with his head against the canvas of the tent, and told me to call him
when it was morning. Some one at the same time handed me a piece of
gingerbread, so I set myself down by his side to do as he bid me.

Those were the days of faction fights; and if people happened to have no
cause for a quarrel, they very soon found one. The tent we were in was
patronised by Orangemen, and of course was a mark for the attacks of the
opposite party. My poor father had slept an hour or so, with three or
four men near him in a similar condition, when a half-drunken body of
men came by, shillelah in hand, looking out for a row. Unhappily the
shapes of the heads of most of the sleepers were clearly developed
through the canvas. The temptation