r, 'An' how are you, and are you elegant?' and shaking her
neighbour by both hands. The clerical handmaid, in a galloping whisper
in Moggy's ear, told her,' 'Twas a weddin' party, and such tarin' fun
she never see--sich dancin' and singin', and laughin' and funnin'; and
she must wait a bit, and see the quality,' a portion of whom, indeed,
were visible as well as over-poweringly audible, through the half-open
door of the front parlour; 'and there was to be a thunderin' fine
supper--a round of beef and two geese, and a tubful of oysters,' &c, &c.

Now I must mention that this feast was, in fact, in its own way, more
romantically wonderful than that of the celebrated wedding of Camacho
the Rich, and one of the many hundred proofs I've met with in the course
of my long pilgrimage that the honest prose of everyday life is often
ten times more surprising than the unsubstantial fictions of even the
best epic poets.

The valiant Sir Jaufry, it is true, was ordered to a dungeon by the fair
Brunissende, who so soon as she beheld him, nevertheless became
enamoured of the knight, and gave him finally her hand in wedlock. But
if the fair Brunissende had been five and forty, or by'r lady, fifty,
the widow of a tailor, herself wondrous keen after money, and stung very
nigh to madness by the preposterous balance due (as per ledger), and the
inexhaustible and ingenious dodges executed by the insolvent Sir Jaufry,
the composer of that chivalric romance might have shrunk from the happy
winding-up as bordering too nearly upon the incredible.

Yet good Father Roach understood human nature better. Man and woman have
a tendency to fuse. And given a good-looking fellow and a woman, no
matter of what age, who but deserves the name, and bring them together,
and let the hero but have proper opportunities, and deuce is in it if
nothing comes of the matter. Animosity is no impediment. On the contrary
'tis a more advantageous opening than indifference. The Cid began his
courtship by shooting his lady-love's pigeons, and putting her into a
pet and a frenzy. The Cid knew what he was about. Stir no matter _what_
passions, provided they _be_ passions, and get your image well into your
lady's head, and you may repeat, with like success, the wooing (which
superficial people pronounce so unnatural) of crook-backed Richard and
the Lady Anne. Of course, there are limits. I would not advise, for
instance, a fat elderly gentleman, bald, carbuncled, dull of wi