THE SHAMROCK. 45 



quered foe. He once told me that the devil was 

 like the candle before him ; and advancing his 

 hand to the flame, suddenly withdraw it, as if 

 burnt : then, after a moment's thought, exultingly 

 added, that God was the wind which could put 

 the candle out : illustrating the assertion by extin- 

 guishing it with a most energetic puff. I often 

 remarked in him such a realization of the constant 

 presence of his great enemy, as kept him per- 

 petually on his guard ; and when it is remembered 

 that Jack never knew enough of language to enable 

 him to read the bible, this will be felt to have been 

 a striking proof of divine teaching. Jack knew 

 many words, but they were principally nouns — he 

 mastered substantives readily, and some of the 

 most common adjectives, with a few adverbs, but 

 the pronouns I never could make him attend to ; 

 the verbs he would generally express by signs. 

 His language was a mere skeleton, rendered in- 

 telligible by his looks and gestures, both of which 

 were remarkably eloquent. I have seen him trans- 

 cribe from the bible or prayer-book, as he was 

 very fond of the pen ; but when he has uninten- 

 tionally turned over two leaves, or missed a line, 

 he has not been sensible of the error : a proof 

 that he wrote as he drew, merely to copy the forms 

 of what he saw. He once got hold of the verse, 

 "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away 

 the. sins of the world," and asked me to explain it- 



