Such was the melancholy end of the honest and warm-hearted Peter Connell, who, unhappily, was not a solitary instance of a man driven to habits of intoxication and neglect of business by the force of sorrow, which time and a well-regulated mind might otherwise have overcome.  We have held him up, on the one hand, as an example worthy of imitation in that industry and steadiness which, under the direction of his wife, raised him from poverty to independence and wealth; and, on the other, as a man resorting to the use of spirituous liquors that he might be enabled to support affliction—­a course which, so far from having sustained him under it, shattered his constitution, shortened his life, and destroyed his happiness.  In conclusion, we wish our countrymen of Peter’s class would imitate him in his better qualities, and try to avoid his failings.

THE LIANHAN SHEE.

One summer evening Mary Sullivan was sitting at her own well-swept hearthstone, knitting feet to a pair of sheep’s gray stockings for Bartley, her husband.  It was one of those serene evenings in the month of June, when the decline of day assumes a calmness and repose, resembling what we might suppose to have irradiated Eden, when our first parents sat in it before their fall.  The beams of the sun shone through the windows in clear shafts of amber light, exhibiting millions of those atoms which float to the naked eye within its mild radiance.  The dog lay barking in his dreams at her feet, and the gray cat sat purring placidly upon his back, from which even his occasional agitation did not dislodge her.

Mrs. Sullivan was the wife of a wealthy farmer, and niece to the Rev. Felix O’Rourke; her kitchen was consequently large, comfortable, and warm.  Over where she sat, jutted out the “brace” well lined with bacon; to the right hung a well-scoured salt-box, and to the left was the jamb, with its little gothic paneless window to admit the light.  Within it hung several ash rungs, seasoning for flail-sooples, or boulteens, a dozen of eel-skins, and several stripes of horse-skin, as hangings for them.  The dresser was a “parfit white,” and well furnished with the usual appurtenances.  Over the door and on the “threshel,” were nailed, “for luck,” two horse-shoes, that had been found by accident.  In a little “hole” in the wall, beneath the salt-box, lay a bottle of holy water to keep the place purified; and against the cope-stone of the gable, on the outside, grew a large lump of house-leek, as a specific for sore eyes and other maladies.

In the corner of the garden were a few stalks of tansy “to kill the thievin’ worms in the childhre, the crathurs,” together with a little Rose-noble, Solomon’s Seal, and Bu-gloss, each for some medicinal purpose.  The “lime wather” Mrs. Sullivan could make herself, and the “bog bane” for the Unh roe, (* Literally, red water) or heart-burn, grew in their own meadow drain; so that, in fact,