l tipplers, he who drinks early is the worst and most incurable."

"Thrue for you, sir, but this only happens me wanst a year, your honor."

"Once a year! But, by the by, you had no appearance of being tipsy,
Peter."

"Tipsy! Bud-a'-age, your honor, I was never seen tipsy in all my life,"
said Peter,--"That's a horse of another color, sir, plase your honor."

The reader must at once perceive that Peter here was only recovering
himself from the effects of the injurious impression which his first
admission was calculated to produce against him in the mind of his
landlord. "Tipsy! No, no, sir; but the rason of it, sir, was this: it
bein' my birthday, sir, I merely tuck a sup in the mornin', in honor o'
the day. It's altogether a lucky day to me, sir!"

"Why, to be sure, every man's birthday may, probably, be called
such--the gift of existence being, I fear, too much undervalued."

"Bedad, your honor, I don't mane that, at all."

"Then what do you mean, Peter?"

"Why, sir, you see, it's not that I was _entirely_ born on this day, but
partly, sir; I was marrid to Ellish here into the bargain,--one o'
the best wives, sir--however, I'll say no more, as she's to the fore
herself. But, death alive, sir, sure when we put both conclusions
together--myself bein' sich a worthy man, and Ellish such a tip-top
wife, who could blame me for smellin' the bottle?--for divil a much more
I did--about two glasses, sir--an' so it got up into my head a little
when I was wid your honor to-day before."

"But what is the amount of all this, Peter?"

"Why, sir, you see only I was as I said, Sir--not tipsy, your honor, any
way, but seein' things double or so; an' that was, I suppose, what made
me offer for the farm double what I intinded. Every body knows, sir,
that the 'crathur' gives the big heart to us, any how, your honor."

"But you know, Peter, we entered into no terms about it. I, therefore,
have neither power nor inclination to hold you to the offer you made."

"Faith, sir, you're not the gintleman to do a shabby turn, nor ever was,
nor one o' your family. There's not in all Europe"--

Ellish, who was a point blank dealer, could endure Peter's mode of
transacting business no longer. She knew that if he once got into the
true spirit of applying the oil of flattery to the landlord, he would
have rubbed him into a perfect froth ere he quitted him. She, therefore,
took up the thread of the discourse, and finished the compliment with