mself very
agreeable to an extremely pretty-looking country girl, around whose waist
he had most lovingly passed his arm under pretence of keeping her from
falling, and to whom, in the midst of all his attentions to the party at
large, he devoted himself considerably, pressing his suit with all the aid
of his native minstrelsy.

"Hould me tight, Miss Matilda, dear."

"My name's Mary Brady, av ye plase."

"Ay, and I do plase.

'Oh, Mary Brady, you are my darlin',
You are my looking-glass from night till morning;
I'd rayther have ye without one farthen,
Nor Shusey Gallagher and her house and garden.'

May I never av I wouldn't then; and ye needn't be laughing."

"Is his honor at home?"

This speech was addressed to a gaping country fellow that leaned on his
spade to see the coach pass.

"Is his honor at home? I've something for him from Mr. Davern."

Mickey well knew that few western gentlemen were without constant
intercourse with the Athlone attorney. The poor countryman accordingly
hastened through the fence and pursued the coach with all speed for above
a mile, Mike pretending all the time to be in the greatest anxiety for his
overtaking them, until at last, as he stopped in despair, a hearty roar of
laughter told him that, in Mickey's _parlance_, he was "sould."

"Taste it, my dear; devil a harm it'll do ye. It never paid the king
sixpence."

Here he filled a little horn vessel from a black bottle he carried,
accompanying the action with a song, the air to which, if any of my
readers feel disposed to sing it, I may observe, bore a resemblance to the
well-known, "A Fig for Saint Denis of France."

POTTEEN, GOOD LUCK TO YE, DEAR.

Av I was a monarch in state,
Like Romulus or Julius Caysar,
With the best of fine victuals to eat,
And drink like great Nebuchadnezzar,
A rasher of bacon I'd have,
And potatoes the finest was seen, sir,
And for drink, it's no claret I'd crave,
But a keg of ould Mullens's potteen, sir,
With the smell of the smoke on it still.

They talk of the Romans of ould,
Whom they say in their own times was frisky;
But trust me, to keep out the cowld,
The Romans at home here like whiskey.
Sure it warms both the head and the heart,
It's the soul of all readin' and writin';
It teaches both science and art,
And disposes for love or for fightin'.
Oh, pottee