However, things may yet prove better:--
Meantime, what awful length of letter!
And how, while heaping thus with gibes
The Pegasus of modern scribes,
My own small hobby of farrago
Hath beat the pace at which even _they_ go!
[1] "Our anxious desire is to be found on the side of the Lord."--_Record
Newspaper_.
LETTER V.
FROM LARRY O'BRANIGAN, IN ENGLAND, TO HIS WIFE JUDY, AT MULLINAFAD.
Dear Judy, I sind you this bit of a letther,
By mail-coach conveyance--for want of a betther--
To tell you what luck in this world I have had
Since I left the sweet cabin, at Mullinafad.
Och, Judy, that night!--when the pig which we meant
To dry-nurse in the parlor, to pay off the rent,
Julianna, the craythur--that name was the death of her--[1]
Gave us the shlip and we saw the last breath of her!
And _there_ were the childher, six innocent sowls,
For their nate little play-fellow turning up howls;
While yourself, my dear Judy (tho' grievin's a folly),
Stud over Julianna's remains, melancholy--
Cryin', half for the craythur and half for the money,
"Arrah, why did ye die till we'd sowled you, my honey?"
But God's will be done!--and then, faith, sure enough,
As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off.
So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch,
Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch,
Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark,
And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark;
The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone!
And poor I wid myself, left condolin' alone.
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