“’Oh, ’twas in the month of May,
     When the lambkins sport and play,
     As I walked out to gain raycrayation,
     I espied a comely maid. 
     Sequestrin’ in the shade—­
     On her beauty I gazed wid admiraytion,’

No, Pether, you never could; the Mullins is good men—­right good men, but they couldn’t do it.”

“Barney,” said the brother of the bridegroom, “you may thank God that Pether is going to be married to your sisther to-morrow as you say, or we’d larn you another lesson—­eh, masther?  That’s the chat too—­ha! ha! ha!  To the divil wid sich impedence!”

“Gintlemen,” said Finigan, now staggering down towards the parties, “I am a man of pacific principles, acquainted wid the larned languages, wid mathematics, wid philosophy, the science of morality according to Fluxions—­I grant you, I’m not college-bred; but, gintlemen, I never invied the oysther in its shell—­for, gintlemen, I’m not ashamed of it, but I acquired—­I absorbed my laming, I may say, upon locomotive principles.”

“Bravo, masther!” said Keenan; “that’s what some o’ them couldn’t say—­”

“Upon locomotive principles.  I admit Munster, gintlemen—­glorious Kerry!—­yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it.  I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system:  like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—­as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude” (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—­“from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person.  Gintlemen, I have the honor of being able to write ‘Philomath’ after my name—­which is O’Finigan, not Finigan, by any means—­and where is the oyster in his shell could do that?  Yes, and although they refused me a sizarship in Trinity College—­for what will not fear and envy do?

     “‘Tantaene animis celesiibus irae’

Yet I have the consolation to know that my name is seldom mentioned among the literati of classical Kerry—­nudis cruribus as they are—­except as the Great O’Finigan!  In the mane time—­”

“Bravo, Masther!” exclaimed Keenan, interrupting him.  “Here, Ted! another bottle, till the Great O’Finigan gets a glass of whiskey.”

“Yes, gintlemen,” proceeded O’Finigan, “the alcohol shall be accepted, puris naturalibus—­which means, in its native—­or more properly—­but which comes to the same thing—­in its naked state; and, in the mane time, I propose the health of one of my best benefactors—­Gerald Cavanagh, whose hospitable roof is a home—­a domicilium to erudition and respectability, when they happen, as they ought, to be legitimately concatenated in the same person—­as they are in your humble servant; and I also beg leave to add the pride of the barony, his fair and virtuous daughter, Kathleen, in conjunction wid the I accomplished son of another benefactor of mine—­honest James Burke—­in conjunction, I say, wid his son, Mr. Hyacinth.  Ah, gintlemen—­Billy Clinton, you thievin’ villain! you don’t pay attention; I say, gintlemen, if I myself could deduct a score of years from the period of my life, I should endeavor to run through the conjugations of amo in society wid that pearl of beauty.  In the mane time—­”