"You seeking information and amusement, attend. have suffered a deal with your teeth, sir," said the sympathizer, as he listened to the sufferer's tale of woe. "Now let me look into your mouth," continued he, and as the sufferer complied, the sympathizer assisted him to keep his mouth open, holding his black moustache firmly with one hand, while with the other he introduced a crooked steel instrument with a white handle into the other's mouth, and invited us to observe the decayed and neglected state of the gentleman's masticators-an unpleasing sight. "But it is not too latc-it is not too late," said he, chcerily, probing the poor devil's stumps; "all this damaged row may be filled and put into good working order-fact, gentlemen-without heat or pressure. Ha, what have we here? a sheep's trotter or the tip of a cow's horn!" The sufferer imperfectly signifies the new discovery in his mouth is merely a false tooth, put in by a first-rate hand in America. "I beg your pardon," cried the sympathizer, tapping the false tooth merrily-"I thought it must be a fragment of a horse's hoof”—and the sufferer, having been tickled and probed about the mouth much longer than he liked, was suddenly scized with dire qualms and misgivings in another direction, broke loose without apology, and bolted into his berth. Further down the table sit three canny Scots sipping whisky-toddy, while a tall West Indian youth, with fine black eyes, and dressed à la Byron, seems listening most deferentially to a thick-set, hale, severe looking Quaker, the formal cut of his brown coat and drab waistcoat, his austere brow chiselled by thought, the strict schooling and rigid control of the muscles of his face, round and rubicund, formed by nature for mirth and good fel lowship, shews the unrelenting stuff of the inner man, and the victory achieved over the outer man. Now with quaint and studied action he draws from the depth of his capacious pocket a book, from which he straightway reads a passage, then plunges his hands below the table, and produces sundry clumsy black looking rings, which at first I thought were a variety of hall-door knockers, carried off as the trophies of a midnight lark in the great metropolis; but that a quaker could be guilty of such a backsliding affair seemed impossible, and I was induced to draw closer to that society, and inspect some ponderous fetters which this upright quaker assured me had been forwarded from the Havannah to Birmingham, with an order for several tons' weight of fetters of the same make for the legs and arms of slaves; but, to the credit of the Birmingham manufacturers be it spoken, they have rejected the order, said the quaker, who I soon discovered to be the philanthropist Se, a most zealous and uncompromising abolitionist. At the foot of one of the tables our attention is engaged by a very noisy group of boon companions, not inappropriately named by a young Virginian, Bacchus, Silenus, and Jonathan Wild. Bacchus, a sad old winebibber, with a heavy yet Listonian countenance, a greasy suit of black, barely embracing his bloated tun-shaped figure; he called himself the great reporter, special reporter to the Times. Silenus, an ever-green old roysterer, quite out of his element when out of liquor; he vociferously applauded everything the great reporter said and did, and in an unguarded hour revealed certain portions of his history to his boon companion, who lost no time in publishing that this merry Silenus was a renegado baker from Marylebone. Jonathan Wild, a tall, very lank, hairbrained fellow, full of pranks, mischief, and diablerie, was the happy link between Bacchus and Silenus ; he sat between the pair, in his white mackintosh and sow-wester, with his son, a very fine two-year old, on his knee, and a glass of champagne in his hand. And thus this happy trio hob, nob, sing, swear, and blaspheme together, till the steward and expert waiters roll in the tea-cups and force the trio to retire from the table. 66 "Tea, sir? Black or green, sir?" Neither, good barber, or barbare, as the Frenchmen call that excellent black waiter. Oh my prophetic soul! what heavings, what dire commotions, will follow the guzzling of hot tea which I see before me, as, seated on the lofty divan near the stern windows, I look through the odd volumes, the scraps, and backs of books, miscalled the library; truly the ship's books have been very badly kept; here I find dozens of a neatly bound thin octavo, kicking about in every direction; a nice book truly, "Swaim's Panacea,” an interesting and disgusting history of all the miraculous cures performed by Swaim's panacea; and fronting the title page we have a full-length portrait of a lady, or skeleton in a balldress, grinning horribly. If this lady is cured, thought I, it would be very advisable for her to stay at home. Faugh! the very portrait has made me ill. I threw the book aside with scorn, little thinking that in a few day's hence, when the book mysteriously disappeared, I should earnestly seek for a copy, and devour the contents with as much gusto as a starving sailor would munch an old shoe. Following the advice and example of a friendly Scot, I had just swallowed a rummer of whisky toddy, and notwithstanding his assurance that it was the verra best thing in the warld, when the "first blush" of sea quakishness was over, I felt dire misgivings as I looked at the lamps swinging to and fro, and the waiters' heads bobbing up and down in the saloon. Stretched at full length upon a sofa, unwilling, and indeed unable, to move, I listened "to the tale of love" which a buffalo man-I mean, a gentleman in a buffalo robe coat-bleated unto a grey mackintosh, who, in turn, an amorous descant sung, until the bonne fortunes of the happy pair was lost or silenced by the loud and obstreperous laughter of a knot of merry wags seated at a table close to my sofa. "Your health, sir-Sir, your health," echoed round the table. "Thank you, gentlemen," said a grave-looking man, bowing stiffly, and coolly replenishing his glass from a jug of mulled port which stood before him; he had been relating some rigmarole story about the purchase of a Yorkshire estate, odds and ends of which had entered my ear together with the bellowings of the buffalo-man, the advice of the Scot, and the general buz of the saloon. "Five hundred acres in the vale of York." "Put a wee drop mair whisky in it, mon.” "She winked divinely at me in church." "I resolved to visit it privately." "She dropped her handkerchief, I picked it up.” “Be a stirring the spoon and putting in a wee drap mair.” “Taken in a man trap." This last sentence, pronounced by the grave gentleman, had "set the table in a roar ;" he had been relating his personal adventures in search of an estate, and being recruited with a generous glass, at the urgent entreaty of his boon companions began to read aloud from the blotted pages of his note book. CHAPTER II. Adventures of a gentleman in search of an estate-Galway coachman-Reverend passenger-His opinions, zeal, and wisdomAthlone inn-The barber and the squire-Visit to Killmoran -A mob-Awkward predicament. "It was not my intention to remain in Dublin a day longer than was absolutely necessary. I proceeded to business at once, read all the advertisements of lands for sale in the newspapers, filled my notebook with the addresses of lawyers and solicitors, and the very unpronounceable names of sundry eligible properties. Cornelius P. Meehan, Esq., was the first solicitor I visited in Dublin. I found that gentleman in his office, surrounded with parchment and little japanned boxes, "chock-full of business," as he said himself. I inquired about the Killmoran property. "Here is a sheet of particulars," said Cornelius, (commonly called Corney.) "May I ask who is your man of business in this city?" continued he. I replied I had not employed a man of business, nor did I intend till I had found something likely to suit mc. 66 "I merely asked that question," said Corney, "as a matter of course. I don't want to force my services upon any man. Now, just look here, sir," continued |