is of affection which had marked
them before his early reason had been so unhappily destroyed. Now, even
up to that period, and in spite of this great calamity, it was not
too late for Art Maguire to retrieve himself, or still to maintain the
position which he had regained. The misfortune which befell his
child ought to have shocked him into an invincible detestation of all
intoxicating liquors, as it would most men; instead of that, however,
it drove him back to them. He had contracted a pernicious habit of
diminishing the importance of first errors, because they appeared
trivial in themselves; he had never permitted himself to reason against
his propensities, unless through the indulgent medium of his own vanity,
or an overweening presumption in the confidence of his moral strength,
contrary to the impressive experience of his real weakness. His virtues
were many, and his foibles few; yet few as they were, our readers
perceive that, in consequence of his indulging them, they proved the
bane of his life and happiness. They need not be surprised, then, to
hear that from the want of any self-sustaining power in himself he fell
into the use of liquor again; he said he could not live without it, but
then he did not make the experiment; for he took every sophistry that
appeared to make in his favor for granted. He lived, if it could be
called life, for two years and a half after this melancholy accident,
but without the spring or energy necessary to maintain his position, or
conduct his business, which declined as rapidly as he did himself. He
and his family were once more reduced to absolute beggary, until in the
course of events they found a poorhouse to receive them. Art was seldom
without a reason to justify his conduct, and it mattered not how feeble
that reason might be, he always deemed it sufficiently strong to satisfy
himself. For instance, he had often told his wife that if Atty had
recovered, sound in body and mind, he had determined never again to
taste liquor; "but," said he, "when I seen my darlin's mind gone, I
couldn't stand it widout the drop of drink to keep my heart an' spirits
up." He died of consumption in the workhouse of Ballykeerin, and there
could not be a stronger proof of the fallacy with which he reasoned than
the gratifying fact, that he had not been more than two months dead,
when his son recovered his reason, to the inexpressible joy of his
mother; so that had he followed up his own sense of wha