"D-n the pistol!" said the squire, throwing it down in a rage. Dick took it up with manifest indignation, and d-d the powder. "Your powder's damp, Ned."

"No, it's not," said the squire; "it's you who have bungled the loading."

66

"Me!" said Dick, with a look of mingled rage and astonishment: I bungle the loading of pistols!-I, that have stepped more ground and arranged more affairs than any man in the county!-Arrah, be aisy, Ned!"

Tom Durfy now interfered, and said, for the present it was no matter, as on the part of his friend, he begged to express himself satisfied.

"But it's very hard we 're not to have a shot," said Dick, poking the touch-hole of the pistol with a pricker which he had just taken from the case which Andy was holding before him.

"Why, my dear Dick," said Durfy," as Murphy has had two shots, and the squire has not had the return of either, he declares he will not fire at him again: and, under these circumstances, I must take my man off the ground."

"Very well," said Dick, still poking the touch-hole, and examining the point of the pricker as he withdrew it.

"And now Murphy wants to know, since the affair is all over and his honour satisfied, what was your brother-in-law's motive in assaulting him this morning, for he himself cannot conceive a cause for it."

"Oh, be aisy, Tom."

"'Pon my soul, it's true."

"Why, he sent him a blister,-a regular apothecary's blister,instead of some law-process, by way of a joke, and Ned wouldn't

stand it."

Durfy held a moment's conversation with Murphy, who now advanced to the squire, and begged to assure him there must be some mistake in the business, for that he had never committed the impertinence of which he was accused.

"All I know is," said the squire," that I got a blister, which my messenger said you gave him."

"By virtue of my oath, squire, I never did it! I gave Andy an enclosure of the law-process."

"Then it's some mistake that vagabond has made," said the squire. "Come here, you sir!" he shouted to Andy, who was trembling under the angry eye of Dick the Devil, who, having detected a bit of lead on the point of the pricker, guessed in a moment Andy had been at work; and the unfortunate rascal had a misgiving that he had made some blunder, from the furious look of Dick.

66

Why don't you come here when I call you?" said the squire, -Andy laid down the pistol-case, and sneaked up to the squire."What did you do with the letter Mr. Murphy gave you for me yesterday ?"

"I brought it to your honour."

"No, you didn't," said Murphy.

"You've made some mistake."

"Divil a mistake I made," answered Andy very stoutly; "I wint

home the minit you gev it to me."

"Did you go home direct from my house to the squire's?"

"Yis, sir, I did: I wint direct home, and called at Mr. M'Garry's by the way for some physic for the childre."

"That's it!" said Murtough; "he changed my enclosure for a blister there; and if M'Garry has only had the luck to send the bit o' parchment to O'Grady, it will be the best joke I've heard this month of Sundays."

"He did! he did!" shouted Tom Durfy; "for don't you remember how O'Grady was after M'Garry this morning."

"Sure enough," said Murtough, enjoying the double mistake. "By dad! Andy, you've made a mistake this time that I'll forgive you."

"By the powers o' war!" roared Dick the Devil, "I won't forgive him what he did now, though! What do you think?" said he, holding out the pistols, and growing crimson with rage: "may I never fire another shot if he hasn't crammed a brace of bullets down the pistols before I loaded them: so, no wonder you burned prime, Ned." There was a universal laugh at Dick's expense, whose pride in being considered the most accomplished regulator of the duello was well known.

"Oh, Dick, Dick! you're a pretty second!" was shouted by all.

Dick, stung by the laughter, and feeling keenly the ridiculous position in which he was placed, made a rush at Andy, who, seeing the storm brewing, gradually sneaked away from the group, and, when he perceived the sudden movement of Dick the Devil, took to his heels, with Dick after him.

"Hurra!” cried Murphy; a race-a race! I'll bet on Andy— five pounds on Andy."

"Done !" said the squire; "I'll back Dick the Devil."

"Tare an' ouns!" roared Murphy; "how Andy runs! Fear's a fine spur."

"So is rage," said the squire.. "Dick's hot-foot after him. Will you double the bet?"

"Done !" said Murphy.

The infection of betting caught the bystanders, and various gages were thrown down and taken up upon the speed of the runners, who were getting rapidly into the distance, flying over hedge and ditch with surprising velocity, and, from the unlevel nature of the ground, an extensive view could not be obtained; therefore Tom Durfy, the steeple-chaser, cried "Mount, mount! or we'll lose the fun : into our saddles, and after them!"

Those who had steeds took the hint, and a numerous field of horsemen joined in the chase of Handy Andy and Dick the Devil, who still maintained great speed. The horsemen made for a neighbouring hill, whence they could command a wider view; and the betting went on briskly, varying according to the vicissitudes of the race. "Two to one on Dick-he 's closing."

"Done !-Andy will wind him yet."

"Well done!—there's a leap! Hurra!-Dick 's down! Well done, Dick!-up again, and going."

"Mind the next quickset hedge-that's a rasper; it's a wide gripe, and the hedge is as thick as a wall-Andy 'll stick in it.-Mind him!-well leap'd, by the powers!-Ha! he's sticking in the hedge -Dick'll catch him now.-No, by jingo! he has pushed his way through-there he's going again at the other side.-Ha! ha! ha!

ha! look at him-he's in tatthers; he has left half of his breeches in the hedge."

"Dick is over now.-Hurra!-he has lost the skirt of his coatAndy is gaining on him.-Two to one on Andy!

"Down he goes!" was shouted, as Andy's foot slipped in making a dash at another ditch, into which he went head over heels, and Dick followed fast, and disappeared after him.

"Ride! ride!" shouted Tom Durfy, and the horsemen put their spurs in the flanks of their steeds, and were soon up to the scene of action. There was Andy roaring murder, rolling over and over in the muddy bottom of a deep ditch, with Dick fastened on him, pummelling away most unmercifully, but not able to kill him altogether for want of breath.

The horsemen in a universal screech of laughter, dismounted, and disengaged the unfortunate Andy from the fangs of Dick the Devil, who was dragged from out of the ditch much more like a scavenger than a gentleman.

The moment Andy got loose, away he ran again, and never cried stop till he earthed himself under his mother's bed in the parent cabin.

The squire and Murtough Murphy shook hands, and parted friends in half an hour after they had met as foes; and even Dick contrived to forget his annoyance in an extra stoup of claret that day after dinner,-filling more than one bumper in drinking confusion to Handy Andy, which seemed a rather unnecessary malediction.

EPIGRAM.

ON Easter Sunday, Lucy spoke,
And said, "A saint you might provoke,
Dear Sam, each day, since Monday last;

But now I see your rage is past."

Said Sam, "What Christian could be meek?

You know, my love, 'twas Passion Week;
And so you see, the rage I've spent

Was not my own-'twas only Lent."

S. LOVER.

INTRODUCTION TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF MY AUNT
JEMIMA, THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST.

BY FRIDOLIN.

PRELIMINARY DISQUISITION ON HUMAN GREATNESS, TOUCHING UPON THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MATTER.

"SOME men are born great, some acquire greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

Thus read my aunt Jemima, and thus subsequently read I, in the days of our respective and respectable minorities; but with this difference-uncertain whether GREATNESS had not already clandestinely made its avatar into me at my birth, or whether it was destined hereafter to yield coyly to my wooing, or would force me in future years to cry in vain humility," Nolo magnificari." I always felt confident of eminence; whereas my aunt Jemima often feelingly reverted to the misery of her young maidenly thoughts, when brooding over the certainty that she could never, under any circumstances, become a great man."

"Great women" were unknown in her early days. There were no such things; save and except such as might be seen at St. Bartholomew's fair at inexpensive cost,-giantesses, who lowered themselves to gain a living by their height. But my aunt Jemima valued not such feminine greatness as theirs. Her aspiring spirit looked not "to measures, but to men." Our notions change!

It is very melancholy, and rather inconvenient, to drag through the last and heaviest stage of life a martyr to a marvel.

Horace, who forbids all wise men to wonder, himself exhibited a thriftless want of economy in the expenditure of his own wonder 'when he marvelled, in excellent metre, that any man should eat garlic who had not murdered his father; and also, that any mortal should have dared to venture on the sea before the discovery of Kyan's antidry-rot patent.

Nor can I much sympathise in the great marvel of that renowned French statesman, of esculent memory, who professed himself unable to discover any principle in nature, or in philosophy, that could explain how a certain Duke of Thuringia, passing through Strasburg on a diplomatic mission, should not have stopped to dine, en hâte, de foie gras. As for the "three, yea four," curious problems of olden time, which consumed the wise king with their inexplicability, they are as clear to modern apprehensions as plate-glass: nay, as my aunt Jemima used to observe, in the days when glory and greatness had come upon her," Thanks be praised!" (My aunt was a religious woman, and guarded herself from profane expressions.)—" Thanks be praised! owing to the enlightenment of the age in which we live, even in those seven wonders of the world there is nothing so very wonderful now." There can be no objection on my part to allow that eclipses were pretty marvellous transactions as long as they occurred in consequence of a bilious dragon needing a pill, and bolting the sun to correct digestion; but ever since dragons have adopted a differ

ent treatment, and abandoned the solar bolus, this phenomenon has subsided into one of common-place pretension. The age of wonders, like the New Marriage-act, has passed.

But one wonder-single, solitary, omnipotent-oppresses me. It is, that mankind, from ignorance of the meaning of true greatness, lay themselves open to perpetual insult, nay, court it. Do we not lie down patiently as lambs, and bear impertinent biographies to be thrust before our eyes of persons who are facetiously termed great? Great! implying, in a paltry and indifferently disguised innuendo, that you, the reader, are of course small,-stunted, as it were, in intellectual growth,-an under-shrub,-a dwarf specimen. Without being in any way consulted in a matter, or examined, or probed, to see what stuff may be in you, it is taken for granted that the world has already made its odious comparisons between your unobtrusive self and its GREAT MAN; and that, with the promptness of a police magistrate, it has summarily decided against you; that you, without knowing it, have been weighed in the scales and found wanting; have flown upwards as a feather, have kicked the beam, have moved lighter than a balloon textured of gossamer and inflated with rarefied essence of hydrogen: a very pretty and gratifying assumption !

Our primitive lessons in emulation generally consist, in great part, in a series of these insults.

The chubby little fellow, bribed to undergo the advantages of scholarship by tardy permission to harass his young nether limbs with trousers, usually of nankeen, finds himself immediately exhorted to strive, in order that in time he may become a GREAT man. He images the vague outline of a human mammoth, and sits down with scanty hope of modelling himself accordingly. In the pride and pomp of baby ambition he yearns to rival in stature and girth the sons of Amalek. He is small, and perfectly conscious that he is so; but frets to exchange his little pulpy fingers for a sinewy fist that can shake a weaver's beam: he meditates upon great men as pumpkins, compared with which he is but a gooseberry. He is not taught, by way of softening the injury done him by an unnecessary contrast, that the one may be full of sweetness as the other of insipidity.

He waxes in years and amplitude: still hears he of that obtrusive department in natural history, the GREAT men. He thinks not of them as before; he no longer deems their greatness to consist in the mere admeasurement of their cubic contents, as in the days of his young innocence, when an extensive pudding would, in his ceremonial, have taken precedence of name and fame. He now understands, and, by understanding, suffers the more acutely under the impertinence. If acts of valour and command, or of senatorial display,—if a tyranny over empires, or mighty influence over the minds and feelings of successive generations,-if literary renown or public benefaction constitute greatness, he is himself of most diminutive dimensions. He knows it. He never for a moment dreamed of denying it. He has enjoyed no scope for being otherwise. He is perfectly aware of the fact, and would at once have admitted it. He needs not to have it perpetually pushed into his face, and thrust before his eyes to glare at him. The pauper feels that he is not one of the wealthy ones of the earth, without being reminded at every instant of the incurious circumstance by some rich bullionist shaking his pockets that the