A REMINISCENCE.

O’Leary and Trevanion had scarcely left the room when the waiter entered with two letters—­the one bore a German post-mark, and was in the well-known hand of Lady Callonby—­the other in a writing with which I was no less familiar—­that of Emily Bingham.

Let any one who has been patient enough to follow me through these “Confessions,” conceive my agitation at this moment.  There lay my fate before me, coupled, in all likelihood, with a view of what it might have been under happier auspices—­at least so in anticipation did I read the two unopened epistles.  My late interview with Miss Bingham left no doubt upon my mind that I had secured her affections; and acting in accordance with the counsel of Trevanion, no less than of my own sense of right, I resolved upon marrying her, with what prospect of happiness I dared not to think of!

Alas! and alas! there is no infatuation like the taste for flirtation —­mere empty, valueless, heartless flirtation.  You hide the dice-box and the billiard queue, lest your son become a gambler—­you put aside the racing calendar, lest he imbibe a jockey predilection—­but you never tremble at his fondness for white muslin and a satin slipper, far more dangerous tastes though they be, and infinitely more perilous to a man’s peace and prosperity than all the “queens of trumps” that ever figured, whether on pasteboard or the Doncaster.  “Woman’s my weakness, yer honor,” said an honest Patlander, on being charged before the lord mayor with having four wives living; and without having any such “Algerine act” upon my conscience, I must, I fear, enter a somewhat similar plea for my downfallings, and avow in humble gratitude, that I have scarcely had a misfortune through life unattributable to them in one way or another.  And this I say without any reference to country, class, or complexion, “black, brown or fair,” from my first step forth into life, a raw sub. in the gallant 4_th, to this same hour, I have no other avowal, no other confession to make.  “Be always ready with the pistol,” was the dying advice of an Irish statesman to his sons:  mine, in a similar circumstance, would rather be “Gardez vous des femmes,” and more especially if they be Irish.

There is something almost treacherous in the facility with which an Irish girl receives your early attentions and appears to like them, that invariably turns a young fellow’s head very long before he has any prospect of touching her heart.  She thinks it so natural to be made love to, that there is neither any affected coyness nor any agitated surprise.  She listens to your declaration of love as quietly as the chief justice would to one of law, and refers the decision to a packed jury of her relatives, who rarely recommend you to mercy.  Love and fighting, too, are so intimately united in Ireland, that a courtship rarely progresses without at least one exchange of shots between some of the parties concerned.  My first twenty-four hours in Dublin is so pleasantly characteristic of this that I may as well relate it here, while the subject is before us; besides, as these “Confessions” are intended as warnings and guides to youth, I may convey a useful lesson, showing why a man should not “make love in the dark.”