when they see and convarse with me, what a pity it is I hav' n't the
advantages of edication and instruction; and that's just where they 're
wrong,--complately wrong."

"Well, I confess I don't perceive that."

"I'll show you, then. There's a kind of janius natural to men like
myself,--in Ireland I mean, for I never heerd of it elsewhere,--that's
just like our Irish emerald or Irish diamond,--wonderful if one
considers where you find it, astonishin' if you only think how azy it is
to get, but a regular disappointment, a downright take-in, if you intend
to have it cut and polished and set. No, sir; with all the care and
culture in life, you 'll never make a precious stone of it!"

"You've not taken the right way to convince me, by using such an
illustration, Billy."

"I 'll try another, then," said Billy. "We are like Willy-the-Whisps,
showing plenty of light where there's no road to travel, but of no
manner of use on the highway, or in the dark streets of a village where
one has business."

"Your own services here are the refutation to your argument, Billy,"
said Harcourt, filling his glass.

"'Tis your kindness to say so, sir," said Billy, with gratified pride;
"but the sacrat was, he thrusted me,--that was the whole of it. All the
miracles of physic is confidence, just as all the magic of eloquence is
conviction."

"You have reflected profoundly, I see," said Harcourt.

"I made a great many observations at one time of my life,--the
opportunity was favorable."

"When and how was that?"

"I travelled with a baste caravan for two years, sir; and there's
nothing taches one to know mankind like the study of bastes!"

"Not complimentary to humanity, certainly," said Harcourt, laughing.

"Yes, but it is, though; for it is by a consideration of the _fero
naturo_ that you get at the raal nature of mere animal existence. You
see there man in the rough, as a body might say, just as he was turned
out of the first workshop, and before he was infiltrated with the
_divinus afflatus_, the ethereal essence, that makes him the first
of creation. There 's all the qualities, good and bad,--love, hate,
vengeance, gratitude, grief, joy, ay, and mirth,--there they are in the
brutes; but they 're in no subjection, except by fear. Now, it's out
of man's motives his character is moulded, and fear is only one amongst
them. D' ye apprehend me?"

"Perfectly; fill your pipe." And he pushed the tobacco towards him.

"I will; and