egular
at table, as the adjutant and the paymaster, and so might they have
continued, had not prosperity, that in its blighting influence upon the
heart, spares neither priests nor laymen, and is equally severe upon mice
(see Aesop's fable) and moral philosophers, actually deprived them, for
the "nonce" of reason, and tempted them to their ruin. You naturally
ask, what did they do? Did they venture upon allusions to the retreat
upon Ross? Nothing of the kind. Did they, in that vanity which wine
inspires, refer by word, act, or inuendo, to the well-known order of
their Colonel when reviewing his regiment in "the Phoenix," to "advance
two steps backwards, and dress by the gutter." Far be it from them:
though indeed either of these had been esteemed light in the balance
compared with their real crime. "Then, what was their failing--come,
tell it, and burn ye?" They actually, "horresco referens," quizzed the
Major coram the whole mess!--Now, Major John Jones had only lately
exchanged into the North Cork from the "Darry Ragement," as he called it.
He was a red--hot orangeman, a deputy--grand something, and vice-chairman
of the "'Prentice Boys" beside. He broke his leg when a school--boy, by
a fall incurred in tying an orange handkerchief around King William's
August neck in College-green, on one 12th of July, and three several
times had closed the gates of Derry with his own loyal hands, on the
famed anniversary; in a word, he was one, that if his church had enjoined
penance as an expiation for sin, would have looked upon a trip to
Jerusalem on his bare knees, as a very light punishment for the crime on
his conscience, that he sat at table with two buck priests from Maynooth,
and carved for them, like the rest of the company!

Poor Major Jones, however, had no such solace, and the canker-worm eat
daily deeper and deeper into his pining heart. During the three or four
weeks of their intimacy with his regiment, his martyrdom was awful. His
figure wasted, and his colour became a deeper tinge of orange, and all
around averred that there would soon be a "move up" in the corps, for the
major had evidently "got his notice to quit" this world, and its pomps
and vanities. He felt "that he was dying," to use Haines Bayley's
beautiful and apposite words, and meditated an exchange, but that, from
circumstances, was out of the question. At last, subdued by grief, and
probably his spirit having chafed itself smooth by such cons