o six-pounders. Brief shall be a summary
of what followed. While the tempest of rebellion raged, we remained
safely in the capital. Constance and I were over head and ears in
love; but another passion struggled with me for mastery. Youth is
always pugnacious; like Norval,

"I had heard of battles, and had longed
To follow to the field some warlike"

colonel of militia, and importuned my father to obtain a commission,
and, like Laertes, "wrung a slow consent." The application was made;
and, soon after breakfast, the butler announced that my presence was
wanted in the drawing-room. I repaired thither, and there found my
father, his fair dame, and my cousin Constance.

"Well, Frank, I have kept my promise, and, in a day or two, I shall
have a captain's commission for you. Before, however, I place myself
under an obligation to Lord Carhampton, let me propose an alternative
for your selection."

I shook my head. "And what may that be, sir?"

"A wife."

"A wife!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, that is the plain offer. You shall have, however, a free liberty
of election: read that letter."

I threw my eye over it hastily. It was from the Lord Lieutenant's
secretary, to say that his excellency felt pleasure in placing a
company in the ---- militia, at Colonel Hamilton's disposal. "There is
the road to fame open as a turnpike trust. Come hither, Constance, and
here is the alternative." She looked at me archly, I caught her to my
heart, and kissed her red lips.

"Father!"

"Well, Frank."

"You may write a polite letter to the Castle, and decline the
commission."

Half a century has passed, but ninety-eight is still, by oral
communications, well known to the Irish peasant; and would that its
horrors carried with them salutary reminiscences! But to my own story.

Instead of fattening beeves, planting trees, clapping vagabonds "i'
th' stocks," and doing all and everything that appertaineth to a
country gentleman, and also, the queen's poor esquire, I might have,
until the downfall of Napoleon, and the reduction of the militia,
events cotemporaneous, smelt powder on the Phoenix Park on field days,
and like Hudibras, of pleasant memory, at the head of a charge of
foot, "rode forth a coloneling." In place, however, of meddling with
cold iron, I yielded to "metal more attractive," and in three months
became a Benedict, and in some dozen more a papa.

In the mean time, rebellion was bloodily put down, and on my lady's
recov