until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth
tumbler of whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and
poor Cos lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table,
by premature inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable
door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at
the Kitchen of his resemblance to King Lear in the plee--of his having
a thankless choild, bedad--of his being a pore worn-out lonely old
man, dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his
sorrows in punch.

It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it
must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was exhausted
and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from his
daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with
strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he
wrote, "unless the--to you insignificant--sum of three pound five can
be forthcoming to liberate a poor man's grey hairs from gaol." And
the good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her
father's liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for the
future. On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful accident,
and broke a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the proprietor
of the shop held him liable. The money was forthcoming on this time too,
to repair her papa's disaster, and was carried down by Lady Mirabel's
servant to the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of the Captain, who
brought the letter announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed
the Captain's aide-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have
seen that gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not
said, that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer
Irish gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary
affairs?), call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the
Roscius Head, Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where the Captain was indeed
in pawn, and for several glasses containing rum-and-water, or other
spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a
third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and
wanted money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call in; and
this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father's safety, and perhaps
reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her father,