“Are you?” replied the other, replying in an absent manner to his words.  “God help you then, and assist you, for it’s few can do it.”

“Can do what?”

“Och, I don’t know; whatever you wor sayin’.”

“Patience, my good friend, Thomas M’Mahon.  I would call you Tom familiarly, but that you are in affliction, and it is well known that every one in affliction is, or at least ought to be, treated with respect and much sympathetical consolation.  You are now in deep sorrow; but don’t you knows that death is the end of all things? and believe me there are many objects in this world which a wise and experienced man would lose wid much greater regret than he would a mere wife.  Think, for instance, how many men there are—­dreary and subdued creatures—­who dare not call their souls, if they have any, or anything else they do possess, their own; think, I repate, of those who would give nine-tenths of all they are worth simply to be in your present condition!  Wretches who from the moment they passed under the yoke matrimonial, to which all other yokes are jokes, have often heard of liberty but never enjoyed it for one single hour—­the Lord help them!”

“Amen!” exclaimed M’Mahon, unconsciously.

“Yes,” proceeded Finigan, “unfortunate devils whose obstinacy has been streaked by a black mark, or which ought rather to be termed a black and blue mark, for that is an abler and more significant illustration, Poor quadrupeds who have lived their whole miserable lives as married men under an iron dynasty; and who know that the thunderings of Jupiter himself, if he were now in vogue, would be mere music compared to the fury of a conjugal tongue when agitated by any one of the thousand causes that set it a-going so easily.  Now, Thomas, I am far from insinuating that ever you stood in that most pitiable category, but I know many who have—­heigho!—­and I know many who do, and some besides who will; for what was before may be agin, and it will be nothing but ascendancy armed with her iron rod on the one hand, against patience, submission, and tribulation, wid their groans and penances on the other.  Courage then, my worthy friend; do not be overwhelmed wid grief, for I can assure you that as matters in general go on the surface of this terraqueous globe, the death of a wife ought to be set down as a proof that heaven does not altogether overlook us.  ’Tis true there are tears shed upon such occasions, and for very secret reason’s too, if the truth were known.  Joy has its tears as well as grief, I believe, and it is often rather difficult, under a blessing so completely disguised as the death of a wi—­of one’s matrimonial partner, to restrain them.  Come then, be a man.  There is Mr. Hycy Burke, a tender-hearted young gentleman, and if you go on this way you will have him weeping’ for sheer sympathy, not pretermitting Mr. Clinton, his companion, who is equally inclined to be pathetic, if one can judge from apparent symptoms.”