essin' it does, for sure we get enough of it when we grow older, and,
perhaps, wiser, and better able to bear it!

Faith, it was as much as I could do to wonder at everything I saw on
boord the beautiful clipper--for a clipper she was, boys, and could
knock off her twelve knots an hour as easy as a bird flies.

The skipper was as good a seaman as ever boxed a compass; the crew,
barring the skulkers, were well trated. As for the "ould soldiers," the
way _they_ got hazed and started was--I must use a Yankee word--a
caution!

We made the Battery at New York in a few hours over thirty days.

I got leave to go on shore with the third mate, a mighty dacint young
man; and whin I tould him I wanted him to take me to my cousin, by my
mother's sister's side, whose name was O'Gorman, with the small-pox, a
squint, and a foxey head, I thought he'd taken a seven years' lase of a
laugh, and would--unless he split his sides--never do anything else but
that same for the rest of his born days.

To cut the matter short, he tould me the skipper had sould me as chape
as a speckled orange! So I gave up all hopes of finding my cousin and
my fortune; saw as much as I could of the beautiful city; bought a
trifle or two to take home; and, after another splendid run, was landed,
safe and sound, onct more on the dear ould Cove of Cork.

"Then you saw no ghost in that ship?" says Bostock.

"Faith, I did!"

"But you have told us nothing about it!" says I.

Wait till a while ago. I tuck my wages, and started for the public,
where I knew I should find my cousin--and right glad he was to see me;
but I couldn't help feeling as if something was wrong by the way he
looked and answered me, whin I asked afther the ould people and little
Norah and Patsey.

"Take a tumbler of punch, now!" says he; "and we'll talk of that
afterward."

"Not at all," says I. "The news, whether good or bad, will go better
with the punch; so we'll have them together. How is my darlint mother?"

"Well!" says he.

"And dad?" I inquired.

"Well, too!" says he.

"Thank the Lord for that!" says I. "And the little ones?"

"Happy and hearty!" says he.

"Thanks be to heaven again!" says I. "But what's the matter wid you, at
all, man alive?"

"The matter wid me?" said he. "What would be the matter wid me?" said
he.

"Sorra a one of me knows!" replied I. "But you look as if you were at a
wake widout whiskey!"

"You didn't hear much about what happened at