d most matter-of-fact of historians. May the reader be not
less embarrassed than myself, is my sincere, if not very courteous, prayer.

I have no doubt myself, that often in recounting some strange incident,--a
personal experience it always was,--he was himself more amused by the
credulity of the hearers, and the amount of interest he could excite in
them, than were they by the story. He possessed the true narrative gusto,
and there was a marvellous instinct in the way in which he would vary a
tale to suit the tastes of an audience; while his moralizings were almost
certain to take the tone of a humoristic quiz on the company.

Though fully aware that I was availing myself of the contract that
delivered him into my hands, and dining with me two or three days a week,
he never lapsed into any allusion to his appearance in print; and the story
had been already some weeks published before he asked me to lend him "that
last thing--he forgot the name of it--I was writing."

Of Frank Webber I have said, in a former notice, that he was one of my
earliest friends, my chum in college, and in the very chambers where I have
located Charles O'Malley, in Old Trinity. He was a man of the highest order
of abilities, and with a memory that never forgot, but ruined and run to
seed by the idleness that came of a discursive, uncertain temperament.
Capable of anything, he spent his youth in follies and eccentricities;
every one of which, however, gave indications of a mind inexhaustible in
resources, and abounding in devices and contrivances that none other but
himself would have thought of. Poor fellow, he died young; and perhaps it
is better it should have been so. Had he lived to a later day, he would
most probably have been found a foremost leader of Fenianism; and from
what I knew of him, I can say he would have been a more dangerous enemy to
English rule than any of those dealers in the petty larceny of rebellion we
have lately seen among us.

I have said that of Mickey Free I had not one but one thousand types.
Indeed, I am not quite sure that in my last visit to Dublin, I did not
chance on a living specimen of the "Free" family, much readier in repartee,
quicker with an apropos, and droller in illustration than my own Mickey.
This fellow was "boots" at a great hotel in Sackville Street; and I owe him
more amusement and some heartier laughs than it has been always my fortune
to enjoy in a party of wits. His criticisms on my sketches