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stirred it in silence, and in his abstrac- | Come to find out, he hadn't any bills on

tion took three spoonfuls of sugar. last he sang again:

"Table cloths, and cups and saucers, Good white bread, and active jaws, sirs, Tea-gunpowder, and SouchongSweet enough, but not too strong."

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At

any bank to lose! Speaking of prudish people, we remember one young lady who stood two hours en chemise, one summer night, on a hotel balcony, in a public square, where ten thousand people were watching her (and a burning building opposite), and the very next night she

What do you mean, my boy?" said had the "cheek to ask us to "please Mrs. Partington, tenderly.

"All right, steady, never clearer, Never loved a breakfast dearer, I'm not bound by witch or wizard, So don't fret your precious gizzard." "But Isaac" persisted the dame, Ike struck his hand upon the table, and swung his knife aloft in his right, looking at a plate upon the table, singing: "What form is that to me appearing? Is it mackerel or is it herring? Let me dash upon it quick, Ne'er again that fish shall kick; Charge upon them, Isaac, charge!"

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look the other way," while she got upon a chair to reach a volume from the book

case.

Now, if the female aforesaid had been anything but a prude-if she had the least bit of modesty-she would have helped herself and said nothing at all, or else asked us to reach the volume, which we should have cheerfully given her (with a kiss, of course), if she had been a modest, decent-looking, wellbehaved sort of a girl. She got pretty well come up with, though. About a week after, a very worthy and pious old clergyman came to the house, and put up over night. When it came time to retire, the bar-keeper waited on him up to No. 31, the next chamber to the girl's. Determined to keep out all intruders, the overnice young lady placed all the movables in her bedroom against the door and went to sleep.

The steamboat train, with a heavy passenger freight, came in about midnight, when the first tramp of travellers upon the stairs started the fair one from her maiden slumbers. More asleep than awake, and more anxious to see that all was right than either, the first motion of her arm brought down table, chairs and cricket, making a wreck of the looking-glass and breaking a five-dollar comb into more than forty pieces!

Folks thought the house was coming down. Everybody rushed to the entries, while the girls screamed, the parson prayed, and the women went into hysterics. The matter, however, was soon explained, when the swooned women suddenly recovered their senses, the men smiled and slammed to their doors, the landlord muttered something not put down in the dictionary, and quiet was restored for the night. To the party most interested, the lesson, on the whole, was rather dearly bought.

We never meet prudish people without thinking of the very modest old maid who visited a newly-married friend of

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HYACINTH O'TOOLE.

FROM TEMPLE BAR.

[This amusing story, by the gifted author of Uncle Silas and In a Glass Darkly, was left, at the time of the author's death, unfinished as it is here, but the Editor

ventures, nevertheless, to give it in this state to the readers of TEMPLE BAR. Humor is not a product of this furiously earnest age, and we cannot afford to lose

any contribution to our mirth which comes in our way. -EDITOR.]

IN the course of my life I have met with more accidents and assaults than twenty other men, and they never cost me any trouble to speak of-cuts, prods, and gunshot, all came quite natural, and healed like enchantment. It was a murdering pity I was not a general. I could have stood any amount of hacking, and slashing, and riddling, and been never the worse man, nor a week on the sick-list. A shoemaker mistook me one day for a County Cork man that was paying attentions to his wife, and gave me a slice with his halfmoon knife-bad luck to that ugly instrument as I was walking down Petticoat Lane, no more thinking of his wife, I give you my solemn honor, than Saint Joseph of Arimathea was of Potiphar's. The next thing was, Baron Dromdouski Polish refugee of distinction, and a perfect gentleman, I will say, and played the guitar like an angel, though liable occasionally to be carried away by his feelings -stuck me with an oyster-knife, while we were differing on politics, in the "Good Samaritan" in Exchange Street. I could count up fifty such unlucky catastrophes; but I think the worst was what happened to me as I was whistling in the hall of my lodgings, where I was waiting to take Miss Doolan out for a walk.

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I must tell you there's nothing on earth I hate equal to a cat, and it is the only thing that walks on feet I was ever thoroughly affeard to look in the face. It's a dread that was born with me, and it will never leave me; and I'd run into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace away from one, and I think I'd have jumped after Quintus Curtius into the bottomless abyss if there was a cat behind me.

Well, the cause of this accident I'm going to mention was our cook, poor thing, that was flighty and out of her mind for love of a private grenadier in the Buffs, and she drove a three-pronged

iron toasting-fork, between the kitchen banisters, up to the hilt in the calf of my leg. I thought it was the cat that I saw there, looking like mischief, only a minute before, and I gave a screech and a jump, and I went flying into the hall with the toasting-fork stuck in my leg.

"La! Mr. Toole, what's that stuck in your leg?" cried Miss Doolan, who was that minute coming down the stairs.

"It's the cat," I roared, almost out of my senses, and away with me out of the hall-door, that chanced to be open, and down the street I pegged like a madman, knocking my hat off on an old gentleman's face, that was looking out of his studywindow, and never waiting to pick it up. I thought the beast would never let go, and my hair was standing up on my head, and I wish you saw the capers I cut, trying to shake it off.

For the Lord's sake," I implored, dancing mad in the middle of the street, will some of you pull it off my leg? I'll give you a shilling, whoever does.'

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"I'll take it off," says a good-natured scavenger, that thought I was mad-and bedad I wasn't far from it-and he strove to catch hold of the handle of the fork: and I was so wild with fright I made a cut at the animal with the stick behind, and struck the scavenger right across the knuckles, and on I ran, feeling the cat's teeth and claws, as I thought, fast in me still.

"Bad luck to you, ye Turk!" says the scavenger, shying a stone at me, as big as a lemon, and knocking a carman out of his dicky with it, pipe, whip, caubeen and all.

"Look what's stuck in his leg, boys!" called out the blackguard little children, running after me. See there, look, look, look what's stuck in his leg!

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"Will some of you hit it, lick it, wallop it? It's mad!" I holloaed.

By this time I was running up Grafton Street, and every one looking after me, some wondering, some laughing, and some frightened.

It's fastened in my leg!" I roared. "Will none of you pull it off?" "I will," says one.

it

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Shoot it," says I.

"I will," says another.

"It's mad," says I.

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Stop your capers, man, and I'll pull out," says another.

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jiffy. Do," said I, Mufti.

"coax it; its name's

It was a little thief that snatched it out at last, as it trailed along the ground, and a devil of a hard pluck it took, and ran away with it and pawned it for a penny.

Well, I need go no further; I mentioned these, and might mention fifty other wounds, to show you that they were no trifles, and I can take my davy there was not one of the series that took a week to heal.

I'm happy to tell you that I was quite sufficiently well to avail myself of Mrs. Molloy's invitation to drink tea, go to the play, and return to supper with her agreeable party. I need not tell you that if I had had as many holes in my body as a colander, and was bleeding at every pore, I would have contrived, cost what it might, to drag myself to the side of the beautiful Theodora, although it was only to expire at her feet.

The hour named for assembling at the hospitable lodgings of the Molloys was half-past five. I dressed myself with uncommon care. We sported wonderful high and voluminous white cravats in those days, which had a good deal the effect of modern poultices. We wore besides under-waistcoats of colored satin, pantaloons and pumps, and blue coats with brass buttons gilt.

I was glad, as I looked at myself in the glass and brushed up my hair above my forehead into a topping," as Mr. Bassegio called that conical triumph of the decorative art, to think that I looked a little pale.

Mundy had called on me the day after this extraction, not knowing a word of the matter, and wondering why I did not look in at the billiard-rooms. I made a rather painful effort, for I was lying on my face, to get into a more natural position, which I did with a slight groan. Wounded?" says he.

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Slightly," said I; "that is, they say it won't be dangerous."

Oh! oh!" says he, smiling faintly down at me as I lay on my bed, with a

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'Shivering an' a daisy, as you say?" he inquired. "Looking into a barrel? Ten paces, eh?"

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'I'll not deny the distance was about that," said I. 'We were both slightly wounded, and-that's all. I won't talk about it; we are under terms not to tell on one another; and ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Are you asked to the Molloys' tea-party to go to the playhouse on next, and back again to supper?"

"Yes," says Mundy, "and I mean to go; that's as fine a black-eyed, piqueycheeked, bouncing grenadier of a

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Stop!" said I, making a bounce to sit up, for my blood was boiling; but I was not equal to that change of posture yet. "If you mean Miss Theodora Molloy-"I began.

"Oh! oh! So it is there the wind sits," says he, and he laughed. "I meant old Mother Molloy, of course; don't be uneasy, my dear fellow."

We parted, notwithstanding, very good friends, and I was glad to hear that he was just going to pay them a visit in their apartments on Ormond Quay, and I knew he could not keep my little secret long from that agreeable family.

The better part of the week had passed, as you are aware, since this visit of Mundy's, and I was now on the point of setting out to enjoy the delightful evening I had been dreaming of for so long.

When my toilet was completed, I practised sitting down and standing up, which I did, perhaps, a little stiffly; still the movement was quite feasible, and I trusted to the inspiration of Theodora's presence to make it graceful.

When all was ready I took my operahat and got into the hackney-coach, with

a great coat-of-arms, as big as a signboard, emblazoned on each door. Some judge, or Lord Mayor, or other magnifico, seemed to have owned every one of them, fifty years before, and turned them adrift to batter about the town ever since. I sat down alone in my glory. It was a roomy place. Three could easily sit at a side. I wish you felt the jolting, and bobbing, and bumping. I was in no condition to enjoy it just then, and, on second thought, I readjusted my pose. I kneeled down; such, for sufficient reasons, was the attitude I preferred, with my elbows on the cushion. There was room enough for changes of the sort: it was as big as a pew, a very uneasy one, you may suppose: the noise of it was enough to deafen a cannoneer for an hour after. If all the old iron and broken glass in Dublin was being tossed by madmen in fryingpans like pancakes, it could not exceed the ring and clatter and batter of that musical enclosure. They were all alike; there was no use in fretting; I wanted to be at Ormond Quay to the minute, not to lose one moment of Theodora's company, possibly to arrive first of the lot and have her all to myself before anyone else should come in to bother us.

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I was so confused and embarrassed, and above all so anxious to put an end to the discussion, before anything past all endurance should be said, that I bolted into the room, putting on the best smile I could and stretching out my hand to Mrs. Molloy, who was next me. But the maid at the door, with arms as thick as Donnelly's, the boxer, caught me by the collar at the nape of the neck with such a sudden jerk that I fell sitting on the floor, smack, as if I was shot, and she never let go her grip, but held me half-choked, sitting bolt upright, with my legs out, pumps and pantaloons, like a pair of compasses.

"How dare ye!" says the powerful maid, giving me a shake that made my teeth chatter. How dare ye, dare ye, dare ye!"

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I think she'd have pulled me down the stairs backwards, sitting as I was, only that Mrs. Molloy recovered her speech, Unfortunately, my coachman was some- and with a stamp on the floor that made thing the worse for liquor, and delayed the teaspoons jump in their saucers, she me considerably by tumbling out of the bawls out, "My curse on you, Juggy box, which he did three times: once on Hanlon, what are you doing to Mr. Dooley, his back, once on his face, and last my most sinsare friend? Up with ye, on his knees and elbows. He had Mr. Dooley, and I hope you're nothing to be helped up on to the box every the worse, and down with you, Juggy time, and his hat, whip, and other ap- Hanlon, and my curse go along wid ye, to purtenances collected and restored by the kitchen. Take a chair and an air of some charitable blackguards of his ac- the fire, Mr. Dooley; the evening's a trifle quaintance, while I, compelled to change could, I think; and settle your cravat at my attitude of devotion, was stamping in the glass there between the windows, and my pumps and silk stockings in my we won't look at ye-bad luck to her imroomy prison, and swearing till I almost pudence. Here's my daughter Theodora, burst my cravat, with my topping," my waiting to shake hands wid ye; but she expressive face, and my fist out of the won't look at ye no more than myself till window. At length, after many hair-ye settle your waistcoat and cravat; it's a breadth escapes and a long and heartrending oscillation between the house ten doors above and the house ten doors below the particular door I wanted to stop at, I was actually liberated, and ascended the narrow stairs, preceded by the maid, with my heart thumping, I verily believe, audibly. I heard people talking, and the voice of Theodora quite distinguishable from the rest. The woman did not announce my name, and

wonder of the world she didn't make smithereens of your watch. She's cruel strong, that same Juggy Hanlon!"

I did as I was bid; I was so confounded I could hardly see my own reflection in the dingy little pier-glass. I saw in the back-ground the images of other people indistinctly, and I heard a sound of voices, but I could not say at the time whether they were laughing at me or what they were doing.

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