wn witticism
closed this speech.

"But is it true, Billy, the lord is going to break up house entirely,
and not come back here?" asked Peter Slevin, the sacristan, whose rank
and station warranted his assuming the task of cross-questioner.

"There 's various ways of breakin' up a house," said Billy. "Ye may
do so in a moral sinse, or in a physical sinse; you may obliterate, or
extinguish, or, without going so far, you may simply obfuscate,--do you
perceave?"

"Yes!" said the sacristan, on whom every eye was now bent, to see if he
was able to follow subtleties that had outwitted the rest.

"And whin I say _obfuscate_," resumed Billy, "I open a question of
disputed etymology, bekase tho' Lucretius thinks the word _obfuscator_
original, there's many supposes it comes from _ob_ and _fucus_, the
dye the ancients used in their wool, as we find in Horace, _lana fuco
medicata_; while Cicero employs it in another sense, and says, _facere
fucum_, which is as much as to say, humbuggin' somebody,--do ye mind?"

"Begorra, he might guess that anyhow!" muttered a shrewd little tailor,
with a significance that provoked hearty laughter.

"And now," continued Billy, with an air of triumph, "we'll proceed to
the next point."

"Ye needn't trouble yerself then," said Terry Lynch, "for Peter has gone
home."

And so, to the amusement of the meeting, it turned out to be the case;
the sacristan had retired from the controversy. "Come in here to Mrs.
Moore's, Billy, and take a glass with us," said Terry; "it isn't often
we see you in these parts."

"If the honorable company will graciously vouchsafe and condescind
to let me trate them to a half-gallon," said Billy, "it will be the
proudest event of my terrestrial existence."

The proposition was received with a cordial enthusiasm, flattering to
all concerned; and in a few minutes after, Billy Traynor sat at the head
of a long table in the neat parlor of "The Griddle," with a company of
some fifteen or sixteen very convivially disposed friends around him.

"If I was Caesar, or Lucretius, or Nebuchadnezzar, I couldn't be
prouder," said Billy, as he looked down the board. "And let moralists
talk as they will, there's a beautiful expansion of sentiment, there's a
fine genial overflowin' of the heart, in gatherin's like this, where we
mingle our feelin's and our philosophy; and our love and our learning
walk hand in hand like brothers--pass the sperits, Mr. Shea. If we look
to the ancie