ng years they were happy. She
loved, as Lord Byron would say, "she loved and was beloved;
she adored and she was worshipped;" but Mr. Sullivau was too
much like the hero of the Lordship's tale--his affections
could not "hold the bent," and the sixth year had scarcely
commenced, when poor Mary discovered that she had "outlived
his liking." From that time to the present he had treated
her continually with the greatest cruelty; and, at last,
when by this means he had reduced her from a comely young
person to a mere handful of a poor creature, he beat her,
and turned her out of doors.

This was Mrs. Sullivan's story; and she told it with such
pathos, that all who heard it pitied her, except her
husband.

It was now Mr. Sullivan's turn to speak. Whilst his wife was
speaking, he had stood with his back towards her, his arms
folded across his breast to keep down his choler; biting his
lips and staring at the blank wall; but the moment she had
ceased, he abruptly turned round, and, curiously enough,
asked the magistrate whether Mistress Sullivau had done
spaking.

"She has," replied his worship; "but suppose you ask her
whether she has any thing more to say."

"I shall, Sir!" exclaimed the angry Mr. Sullivan. "Mistress
Sullivan, had you any more of it to say '!"

Mrs. Sullivan raised her eyes to the ceiling, clasped her
hands together, and was silent.

"Very well, then," he continued, "will I get lave to spake,
your Honour?"

His Honour nodded permission, and Mr. Sullivan immediately
began a defence, to which it is impossible to do justice; so
exuberantly did he suit the action to the word, and the
word to the action. "Och! your Honour, there is something
the matter with me!" he began; at the same time putting two
of his fingers perpendicularly over his forehead, to
intimate that Mrs. Sullivan played him false. He then went
into a long story about a "Misther Burke," who lodged in his
house, and had taken the liberty of assisting him in his
conjugal duties, "without any lave from him at all at all."
It was one night in partickler, he said, that he went to bed
betimes in the little back parlour, quite entirely sick with
the head-ache. Misther Burke was out from home, and when the
shop was shut up, Mrs. Sullivan