ad, both of which tastes he gratified,
although his size might seem to offer obstacles to the one, and his total
ignorance of every continental language, would appear to preclude the
other; with a great liking for tobacco, which he smoked all day--a
fondness for whist and malt liquors--his antipathies were few; so that
except when called upon to shave more than once in the week, or wash his
hands twice on the same day, it was difficult to disconcert him. His
fortune was very ample; but although his mode of living was neither very
ostentatious nor costly, he contrived always to spend his income. Such
was the gentleman I now presented to my friends, who, I must confess,
appeared strangely puzzled by his manner and appearance. This feeling,
however, soon wore off; and before he had spent the morning in their
company, he had made more way in their good graces, and gone farther to
establish intimacy, than many a more accomplished person, with an
unexceptionable coat and accurate whisker might have effected in
a fortnight. What were his gifts in this way, I am, alas, most
deplorably ignorant of; it was not, heaven knows, that he possessed any
conversational talent--of successful flattery he knew as much as a negro
does of the national debt--and yet the "bon-hommie" of his character
seemed to tell at once; and I never knew him fail in any one instance to
establish an interest for himself before he had completed the ordinary
period of a visit.

I think it is Washington Irving who has so admirably depicted the
mortification of a dandy angler, who, with his beaver garnished with
brown hackles, his well-posed rod, polished gaff, and handsome
landing-net, with every thing befitting, spends his long summer day
whipping a trout stream without a rise or even a ripple to reward him,
while a ragged urchin, with a willow wand, and a bent pin, not ten yards
distant, is covering the greensward with myriads of speckled and scaly
backs, from one pound weight to four; so it is in every thing--"the race
is not to the swift;" the elements of success in life, whatever be the
object of pursuit, are very, very different from what we think them at
first sight, and so it was with Mr. O'Leary, and I have more than once
witnessed the triumph of his homely manner and blunt humour over the
more polished and well-bred taste of his competitors for favour; and
what might have been the limit to such success, heaven alone can tell,
if it were not that he