e upon you, and may
your honor live all the days of your life, and many years longer, if
that's all!--Arrah, but I'm plased to my heart's content to meet wid
your honor in a strange land!"

The congregated expectants now approached, and respectfully united their
congratulations with those of their respectable deputy.--"The pot of
Saint Patrick be upon you, and may your reverence live for ever and a
day afterwards!" It was in vain that Sir Felix offered them money. "No,
the devil a drap would they taste, unless it was wid his honor's own
self, by the holy poker!"

There was no remedy; so Sir Felix, with his friends Dash all
and Tallyho, who were much amused by this ~130~~unsophisticated
manifestation of Irish recognition, accompanied the motley groupe to the
blue-ruin shop.{1}

[Illustration: page130 Blue Ruin Shop]

Entering then, the neighbouring den, of a licensed retailer of
destruction, the first object on whom the scrutinizing eye of the
baronet cast a glance, was his servant, regaling himself and his blowen
with a glass of the "right sort." The indignant Sir Felix raised his
cane, and was about to inflict a well-merited chastisement, when the
transgressor, deprecating the wrath of his master, produced the full
amount of the cheque in mitigation of punishment, expressing his
obligations to mother Cummings for the preservation of the property.

"And who, in the devil's name," asked the baronet, "is mother
Cummings?"{2}

"Och! a good sowl," said the valet, "for all that, she keeps convanient
lodgings. And so your honor, just having got a drap too much of the
cratur last night, this girl and I took up our lodgings at mother
Cummings's: good luck to her any how! And if your honor will but forgive
me this once, I will, as in duty bound, serve you faithfully by night
and by day, in any or in no way at all at all, and never will be guilty
of the like again as long as I live, gra."

1 Blue-ruin, alias English Gin.--Not unaptly is this
pernicious beverage so denominated. It is lamentable to
observe the avidity with which the lower orders of society
in London resort to this fiery liquid, destructive alike of
health and morals. The consumption of gin in the metropolis
is three-fold in proportion to what it was a few years ago.
Every public-house is now converted into "Wine Vaults," as
they are termed, which the venders of poison and their
account in; it is true, that the