1832.] The Procrastuiator. 97 



ing, healthy infant the joy of his mother's heart the pride of his 

 father's eyes was a blurred, a disfigured corpse a thing that it was 

 offensive to look upon, and loathsome to approach. Yet one sat by his 

 little cot; and though the apartment, in conformity with the outre, yet 

 affectionate custom of the country, was crowded by the retainers of the 

 family, and the peasants of the neighbouring villages and hills yet she 

 heeded them not but, ever and anon, would wipe its discoloured lips, 

 where her kisses had often dwelt with all the fervour and tenderness of 

 a mother's love then pressing the little hands between her own, she 

 would rest her burning brow upon the simple pall, and pray for the 

 relief of tears. They put him in his coffin yet still, she was by its side. 

 Then, when the deep wail and the cry arose, " lamentation, and weep- 

 ing, and great mourning/' and the father entered to take the last look 

 of what he, too, had dearly loved, the feelings of the wife were over- 

 whelmed by those of the mother ; and she bitterly reproached him, as 

 the cause of her boy's death. " Did you not promise, day after day, 

 that the surgeon should come to inoculate him ? But he is dead and I 

 have now no child !" 



This lesson, it may well be supposed, sank deeper into Mount Doyne's 

 heart than any other ; but he said it came too late. It might be so for 

 him though my belief is, that, in worldly as well as in spiritual things, 

 there is hope, even at the eleventh hour nay, more than hope certainty, 

 if the mind so will it. It was well said by Napoleon, that " impossible 

 is the adjective of fools." Nothing weds us so closely to immortality 

 as habitual firmness. A resolved man can be, if it so pleases him, 

 another Alexander. 



* * * * * 



ft You might well give me rue, and wormwood, and nettles, Milly, as a 

 wedding dowry/' murmured the lady of Castle Mount Doyne, one bleak 

 December night, as the old nurse was fanning with her apron the uncer- 

 tain blaze of a wood fire in her solitary chamber. " How the noise 

 below distracts my poor head ! they have seized every thing." 



" Auld Morty told me that master might have got off the sheriff's sale 

 only somehow he forgot to sign something. But eh ! sure it was the 

 way of the family, they say. It is not sae in my ain country." 



The lady smiled but with such sadness, one would rather she had 

 wept. 



" Keep a good heart, lady-dear," said the old steward, kindly ; 

 " master's friends will never desert him tisn't in an Irish heart to look 

 could on the unfortunate. Och ! they know too much of that same 

 to think easy of it. Sure it's himself that has the grand friends in Dub- 

 lin. Why not ! an' he of such an ould, ancient family and the sheriff 

 and all the people's gone now ?" 



" Taste a morsel of this, Misthress, honey," chimed in our former 

 acquaintance, Molly Maggs ; " it's as nate a hare as iver was snared. 

 Bat Beetle caught it a purpose for ye knowing I had the thrue Frinch 

 way o' dressin' it ; he thought it nourishin'-like, and that it might rise 

 ye'r heart/' 



" Thrue for ye, Mistress Maggs," said Morty, as he followed the 

 housekeeper out of the room ; " and it 'ill go hard if I can't find a drop 

 o' the rale sort (wine I mean) to keep the life in the craythur though 

 the devil of an agent thought he swept the cellar, as well as every thing 

 else, clane out." 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XIII. No. 73. H 



