"Or, as we used to say when I was dragooning thirty years ago, 'the
tongue will scarcely meet the buckle,'" responded the colonel.

"I have been thinking," said my mother timidly, "that Frank might go
to the bar."

"I would rather that he went direct to the devil," roared the
commander, who hated lawyers, and whose great toe had at the moment
undergone a disagreeable visitation.

"Do not lose temper, dear James," and she laid down her knitting to
replace the hassock he had kicked away under the painful irritation
of a disease that a stoic could not stand with patience, and, as they
would say in Ireland, would fully justify a Quaker if "he kicked his
mother."

"Curse the bar!" but he acknowledged his lady wife's kind offices by
tapping her gently on the cheek. "When I was a boy, Mary, a lawyer and
a gentleman were identified. Like the army--and, thank God! that is
still intact, none but a man of decent pretensions claimed a gown, no
more than a linen-draper's apprentice now would aspire to an epaulet.
Is there a low fellow who has saved a few hundreds by retailing whisky
by the noggin, who will not have his son 'Mister Counsellor O'Whack,'
or 'Mister Barrister O'Finnigan'? No, no, if you must have Frank bred
to a local profession, make him an apothecary; a twenty pound note
will find drawers, drugs, and bottles. Occasionally he may be useful;
pound honestly at his mortar, salve a broken head, carry the country
news about, and lie down at night with a tolerably quiet conscience.
He may have hastened a patient to his account by a trifling over-dose;
but he has not hurried men into villainous litigation, that will
eventuate in their ruin. His worst offense against the community
shall be a mistaking of toothache for tic-douloureux, and lumbago for
gout--oh, d----n the gout!"--for at that portion of his speech the
poor colonel had sustained an awful twinge.

"Well," continued the dame, "would you feel inclined to let him enter
the University, and take orders?"

"Become a churchman?" and away, with a furious kick, again went the
hassock. "You should say, in simple English, make him a curate for the
term of natural life. The church in Ireland, Mary, is like the bar, it
once was tenanted by gentlemen who had birth, worth, piety, learning,
or all united to recommend him to promotion. Now it is an arena where
impure influence tilts against unblushing hypocrisy. The race is
between some shuffling old lawyer, or a canting sa