quiry,
but walked the room moodily, with his hands in his pockets.

O'Shea gave a little faint sigh,--such a sigh as a weary pedestrian may
give, as, turning the angle of the way, he sees seven miles of straight
road before him, without bend or curve. It was now eleven o'clock, and
five dreary hours were to be passed before dinner-time.

Oh, my good reader, has it been amongst your life's experiences to have
submitted to an ordeal of this kind,--to be caged up of a wet day with
an unwilling guest, whom you are called on to amuse, but know not how
to interest; to feel that you are bound to employ his thoughts, with the
sad consciousness that in every pause of the conversation he is cursing
his hard fate at being in your company; to know that you must deploy
all the resources of your agreeability without even a chance of success,
your very efforts to amuse constituting in themselves a boredom? It is
as great a test of temper as of talent. Poor O'Shea, one cannot but pity
you! To be sure, you are not without little aids to pass time, in
the shape of cards, dice, and such-like. I am not quite sure that a
travelling roulette-table is not somewhere amongst your effects. But of
what use are they all _now?_ None would think of a lecture on anatomy
to a man who had Just suffered amputation.

No, no! play must not be thought of,--it must be most sparingly alluded
to even in conversation,--and so what remains? O'Shea was not without
reminiscences, and he "went into them like a man." He told scenes of
early Trinity College life; gave sketches of his contemporaries, one
or two of them now risen to eminence; he gave anecdotes of Gray's Inn,
where he had eaten his terms; of Templar life, its jollities and its
gravities; of his theatrical experiences, when he wrote the "Drama"
for two weekly periodicals; of his like employ when he reported
prize-fights, boat-races, and pigeon-matches for "Bell's Life." He then
gave a sketch of his entrance into public life, with a picture of an
Irish election, dashed off spiritedly and boldly; but all he could
obtain from his phlegmatic listener was a faint smile at times, and a
low muttering sound, that resolved itself into, "What snobs!"

At last he was in the House, dealing with great names and great events,
which he ingeniously blended up with Bellamy's and the oyster suppers
below stairs; but it was no use,--they, too, were snobs! It was all
snobbery everywhere. Freshmen, Templars, Pugilists, S