f twenty, for half-a-dozen
miles round, that I had not beat for one cause or other. There were the
vicar's two sons of Castle Brady--in course I could not associate with
such beggarly brats as them, and many a battle did we have as to
who should take the wall in Brady's Town; there was Pat Lurgan, the
blacksmith's son, who had the better of me four times before we came
to the crowning fight, when I overcame him; and I could mention a score
more of my deeds of prowess in that way, but that fisticuff facts are
dull subjects to talk of, and to discuss before high-bred gentlemen and
ladies.

However, there is another subject, ladies, on which I must discourse,
and THAT is never out of place. Day and night you like to hear of it:
young and old, you dream and think of it. Handsome and ugly (and, faith,
before fifty, I never saw such a thing as a plain woman), it's the
subject next to the hearts of all of you; and I think you guess my
riddle without more trouble. LOVE! sure the word is formed on purpose
out of the prettiest soft vowels and consonants in the language, and
he or she who does not care to read about it is not worth a fig, to my
thinking.

My uncle's family consisted of ten children; who, as is the custom in
such large families, were divided into two camps, or parties; the one
siding with their mamma, the other taking the part of my uncle in all
the numerous quarrels which arose between that gentleman and his lady.
Mrs. Brady's faction was headed by Mick, the eldest son, who hated me
so, and disliked his father for keeping him out of his property: while
Ulick, the second brother, was his father's own boy; and, in revenge,
Master Mick was desperately afraid of him. I need not mention the girls'
names; I had plague enough with them in after-life, Heaven knows; and
one of them was the cause of all my early troubles: this was (though to
be sure all her sisters denied it) the belle of the family, Miss Honoria
Brady by name.

She said she was only nineteen at the time; but I could read the
fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the three
books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle's library), and
know that she was born in the year '37, and christened by Doctor Swift,
Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: hence she was three-and-twenty years old
at the time she and I were so much together.

When I come to think about her now, I know she never could have been
handsome; for her figure was r