"My dear Dunroe," said his father, seriously, "never sport with
the miseries of a people, especially when that people are your own
countrymen."

"My lord," he replied, disregarding the rebuke he had received, "for
Heaven's sake conceal that disgraceful fact. Remember, I am a young
nobleman; call me profligate--spendthrift--debauchee--anything you will
but an Irishman. Don't the Irish refuse beef and mutton, and take to
eating each other? What can be said of a people who, to please their
betters, practise starvation as their natural pastime, and dramatize
hunger to pamper their most affectionate lords and masters, who,
whilst the latter witness the comedy, make the performers pay for their
tickets? And yet, although the cannibal system flourishes, I fear they
find it anything but a Sandwich island."

"Papa," said Lady Emily, in a whisper, and with tears in her eyes, "I
fear John's head is a little unsettled by his illness."

"You will injure yourself, my dear Dunroe," said his father, "if you
talk so much."

"Not at all, my good lord and father. But I think I recollect one of
their bills of performance, which runs thus: 'On Saturday, the 25th
inst., a tender and affectionate father, stuffed by so many cubic
feet of cold wind, foul air, all resulting from extermination and
the benevolence of a humane landlord, will in the very wantonness
of repletion, feed upon, the dead body of his own child--for which
entertaining performance he will have the satisfaction, subsequently,
of enacting with success the interesting character of a felon, and be
comfortably lodged at his Majesty's expense in the jail of the county.'
Why, my lord, how could you expect me to acknowledge such a country?
However, I must talk to Tom Norton about this. He was born in the
country you speak of--and yet Tom has an excellent appetite; eats like
other people; abhors starvation; and is no cannibal. It is true, I
have frequently seen him ready enough to eat a fellow--a perfect
raw-head-and-bloody-bones--for which reason, I suppose, the principle,
or instinct, or whatever you call it, is still latent in his
constitution. But, on the other hand, whenever Tom gnashed his teeth at
any one _a la cannibale_, if the other gnashed his teeth at him, all the
cannibal disappeared, and Tom was quite harmless."

* This alludes to a dreadful fact of cannibalism, which
occurred in the South of Ireland in 1846.

"By the way, Dunroe," said his father, "who