may the son of my
father never have a worse birth any how."

"And an upright?"

~104~~ "Is it an upright your honor's spaking about?--fait and troth, as
to that same, may the devil fly away with Thady O'Flannagan, and that is
myself sure, if he knows much about it at all at all, seeing as how he
has not rested his old bones on such a thing, arrah, these many long
years; but sure enough it is four stumps, with boards across, a good
flock-bed, a blanket below and a sheet above, with a decent coverlet
pieced and patched in a hundred places to boot;--may you never want the
like of it, any how!"

"Thanks for your good wishes, my friend," said Dashall; "and this for
the information which you have given us."

"By the powers of good luck!" exclaimed the itinerant philosopher, "a
tirteener!--Now an Irishman's blessing upon you for two good-hearted
gentlemen; may you live all the days of your lives in peace and
prosperity both here and hereafter!"{1}

1 The many impoverished and deserted beings who daily wander
the streets, trusting for the vegetative existence of the
moment to eleemosynary occurrences, are incalculable.
Amongst these sons and daughters of misery, happy is the one
who, after partially satisfying the cravings of hunger,
possesses two-pence, the price of a shake down for the
night, in Rainbridge or Buckeridge-street, St. Giles's!--The
upright is a wretched semblance of a bed, at the rate of
three-pence or four-pence; but the lofty aspirant to genteel
accommodation, must put down a tester. In this way there are
frequently beds to the number of seventy in one house, made
up for nocturnal visitants!

Palestine in London, or the Holy Land, includes that portion of the
parish of St. Giles, Bloomsbury, inhabited by the lower Irish, with whom
it seems a favorite place of residence. The Squire having expressed to
his friend a desire of perambulating these boundaries, they proceeded,
by the way of George street, to explore the sanctified labyrinths, the
scenes of diurnal clamour, and hebdomadary conflict.

"Arrah now," exclaimed a voice of maternity, in the person of a
legitimate daughter of Erin,--"Arrah now, you brat of the devil's own
begetting, be after bowling along to your fader: bad luck to him, and be
sure that you bring him home wid you, by the token that the murphies are
cracking, the salt-herrings scalding, and the apple-dumplings tumbling
abo