HE ghosts of the long ago—laid and buried, as you fancied, years and years since, friends, though your present sight may fail to discern them,—they are traveling with you still, a ghastly company. While you drive in your carriage along life's smoothest turnpike-roads, or pace, footsore and weary, over the flinty by-paths of existence, past events are skipping on beside you, mocking, jeering, at your profound self-delusion. Shall fleet steeds leave them behind? Shall liveried servants keep them at bay? Shall an unsuccessful existence, drawing to a still more unsuccessful close, be able to purchase their forbearance? Nay, invisible now, they shall be visible some day; voiceless, they shall yet find tongues; despised, they shall rear their head and hiss at you; forgotten, they shall reappear with more strength than at their first birth; and when the evil day comes, and your power, and your energy, and your youth and your hope, have gone, they shall pour the overflowing drop into your cup, they shall mingle fennel with your wine, they shall pile the last straw on your back, they shall render wealth valueless and life a burden; they shall make poverty more bitter, and add another pain to that which already racks you; they shall break the

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THE FARMER AND THE COUNSELLOR.

breaking heart, and make you turn your changed face to the wall, and gather up your feet into your bed, and pray to be delivered from your tormentors by your God, who alone knows all.

Wherefore, young man, if you would ensure a peaceful old age, be careful of the acts of each day of your youth; for with youth the deeds thereof are not to be left behind. They are detectives, keener and more unerring than ever the hand of sensational novelist depicted; they will dog' you from the hour you sinned till the hour your trial comes off. You are prosperous, you are great, you are "beyond the world," as I have heard people say, meaning the power or the caprice thereof; but you are not beyond the power of events. Whatever you may think now, they are only biding their time; and when you are weak and at their mercy, when the world you fancied you were beyond has leisure to hear their story and scoff at you, they will come forward and tell all the bitter tale. And if you take it one way, you will bluster and bully, and talk loud, and silence society before your face, if you fail to still its tattle behind your back; while if you take it another way, you will bear the scourging silently, and cover up the marks of the lash as best you may, and go home and close your door, and sit there alone with your misery, decently and in order, till you die.

A

THE FARMER AND THE COUNSELLOR.

COUNSEL in the

Common Pleas,"

Who was esteemed a mighty wit,
Upon the strength of a chance hit,
Amid a thousand flippancies,
And his occasional bad jokes,

In bullying, bantering, browbeating,
Ridiculing and maltreating
Women, or other timid folks;
In a late cause, resolved to hoax
A clownish Yorkshire farmer-one
Who by his uncouth look and gait,
Appeared expressly meant by fate
For being quizzed and played upon.
So having tipped the wink to those
In the back rows,

Who kept their laughter bottled down,
Until our wag should draw the cork-
He smiled jocosely on the clown,
And went to work.

Now look at me, clown and attend,
Have I not seen you somewhere, friend?"
"Yees, very like, I often go there."

"Our rustic's waggish-quite lanconic,"
(The counsel cried, with grin sardonic,)
"I wish I'd known this prodigy,
This genius of the clods, when I

On circuit was at York residing.
Now, farmer, do for once speak true,
Mind, you're on oath, so tell me, you
Who doubtless think yourself so clever,
Are there as many fools as ever
In the West Riding?"

"Well, Farmer Numskull, how go calves at "Why no, sir, no! we've got our share.

York?"

But not so many as when you were there."

JIMMY BUTLER AND THE OWL.

101

JIMMY BUTLER AND THE OWL.

was in the summer of '46 that I landed at Hamilton, fresh as a new pratie just dug from the "ould sod," and wid a light heart and a heavy bundle I sot off for the township of Buford, tiding a taste of a song, as merry a young fellow as iver took the road. Well, I trudged on and on, past many a plisint place, pleasin' myself wid the

thought that some day I might have a place of my own, wid a world of chickens and ducks and pigs and childer about the door; and along in the afternoon of the sicond day I got to Buford village. A cousin of me mother's, one Dennis O'Dowd, lived about sivin miles from there, and I wanted to make his place that night, so I inquired the way at the tavern, and was lucky to find a man who was goin' part of the way an' would show me the way to find Dennis. Sure he was very kind indade, an' when I got out of his wagon he pointed me through the wood and tould me to go straight south a mile an' a half, and the first house would be Dennis's. "An' you've no time to lose now,"

said he, "for the sun is low, and mind you don't get lost in the woods."

"Is it lost now," said I, "that I'd be gittin, an' me uncle as great a navigator as iver steered a ship across the thrackless say! Not a bit of it, though I'm obleeged to ye for your kind advice, and thank yez for the ride."

An' wid that he drove off an' left me alone. I shouldered me bundle bravely, an' whistlin' a bit of tune for company like, I pushed into the bush. Well, I went a long way over bogs, and turnin' round among the bush an' trees till I

But, bad cess to it! all

began to think I must be well nigh to Dennis's. of a sudden I came out of the woods at the very identical spot where I started in, which I knew by an ould crotched tree that seemed to be standin' on its head and kickin' up its heels to make divarsion of me. By this time it was growin' dark, and as there was no time to lose, I started in a second time, determined to keep straight south this time and no mistake. I got on bravely for a while, but och hone! och hone! it got so dark I couldn't see the trees, and I bumped me nose and barked me shins, while

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JIMMY BUTLER AND THE OWL.

the miskaties bit me hands and face to a blister; an' after tumblin' and stumblin' around till I was fairly bamfoozled, I sat down on a log, all of a trimble, to think that I was lost intirely, an' that maybe a lion or some other wild craythur would devour me before morning.

Just then I heard somebody a long way off say, "Whip poor Will! ” "Bedad," sez I, "I'm glad that it isn't Jamie that's got to take it, though it seems it's more in sorrow than in anger they are doin' it, or why should they say, 'poor Will?' an' sure they can't be Injin, haythin, or naygur, for it's plain English they're afther spakin'. Maybe they might help me out o' this," so I shouted at the top of my voice, "A lost man!" Thin I listened. Prisently an answer came.

"Who? Whoo? Whooo?"

"Jamie Butler, the waiver!" sez I, as loud as I could roar, an' snatchin' up me bundle an' stick, I started in the direction of the voice. Whin I thought I had got near the place I stopped and shouted again, "A lost man!"

"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" said a voice right over my head.

"Sure," thinks I, "it's a mighty quare place for a man to be at this time of night; maybe it's some settler scrapin' sugar off a sugar-bush for the children's breakfast in the mornin'. But where's Will and the rest of them?" All this wint through me head like a flash, an' thin I answered his inquiry.

"Jamie Butler, the waiver," sez I; "and if it wouldn't inconvanience yer honor, would yez be kind enough to step down and show me the way to the house of Dennis O'Dowd?"

"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" sez he.

"Dennis O'Dowd," sez I, civil enough, " and a dacent man he is, and first cousin to me own mother."

"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" sez he again.

"Me mother!" sez I, "and as fine a woman as iver peeled a biled pratie wid her thumb nail, and her father's name was Paddy McFiggin. "Who! Whoo! Whooo!"

'Paddy McFiggin! bad luck to yer deaf ould head, Paddy McFiggin, I say-do ye hear that? An' he was the tallest man in all county Tipperary, excipt Jim Doyle, the blacksmith."

"Who! Whoo! Whooo!"

"Jim Doyle, the blacksmith," sez I, "ye good for nothin' blaggurd naygur, and if yez don't come down and show me the way this min't, I'll climb up there and break every bone in your skin, ye spalpeen, so sure as me name is Jimmy Butler!"

JIMMY BUTLER AND THE OWL.

103

"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" sez he, as impident as ever.

I said niver a word, but lavin' down me bundle, and takin' me stick in me. teeth, I began to climb the tree. Whin I got among the branches I looked quietly around till I saw a pair of big eyes just forninst me.

Whist," sez I, "and I'll let him have a taste of an Irish stick," and wid that I let drive and lost me balance an' came tumblin' to the ground, nearly breakin' me neck wid the fall. Whin

I came to me sinsis I had a very sore

head wid a lump on it like a goose egg,

and half of me Sunday coat-tail torn off intirely. I spoke to the chap in the tree, but could git niver an answer, at all, at all.

Sure, thinks I, he must have gone home to rowl up his head, for by the powers I didn't throw me stick for nothin'.

Well, by this time the moon was up and I could see a little, and I detarmined to make one more effort to reach Dennis's.

"Sure," sez

I wint on cautiously for a while, an' thin I heard a bell. I, "I'm comin' to a settlement now, for I hear the church bell." I kept on toward the sound till I came to an ould cow wid a bell on. She started to run, but I was too quick for her, and got her by the tail and hung on, thinkin' that maybe she would take me out of the woods. On we wint, like an ould country steeple-chase, till, sure enough, we came out to a clearin' and a house in sight wid a light in it. So, leaving the ould cow puffin' and blowin' in a shed, I went to the house, and as luck would have it, whose should it be but Dennis's.

He gave me a raal Irish welcome, and introduced me to his two daughters-as purty a pair of girls as iver ye clapped an eye on. But whin I tould him my adventure in the woods, and about the fellow who made fun of me, they all laughed and roared, and Dennis said it was an owl.

"Do ye tell me now?" sez I. "Sure it's a quare country and a quare

bird."

And thin they all laughed again, till at last I laughed myself, that