SHOWING HOW READY WIT MAY SUPPLY THE PLACE OF READY MONEY.

Tom Connor was a perfect specimen of the happy, careless, improvident
class of Irishmen who think it "time enough to bid the devil good morrow
when they meet him," and whose chief delight seems to consist in getting
into all manner of scrapes, for the mere purpose of displaying their
ingenuity of getting out of them again. Tom, at the time I knew him, had
passed the meridian of his life; "he had," as he used to say himself,
"given up battering," and had luckily a small annuity fallen to him by the
demise of a considerate old aunt who had kindly popped off in the nick of
time. And on this independence Tom had retired to spend all that remained
to him of a merry life at a pleasant little sea-port town in the West of
Ireland, celebrated for its card-parties and its oyster-clubs. These
latter social meetings were held by rotation at the houses of the members
of the club, which was composed of the choicest spirits of the town. There
Doctor McFadd, relaxing the dignity of professional reserve, condescended
to play practical jokes on Corney Bryan, the bothered exciseman; and
Skinner, the attorney, repeated all Lord Norbury's best puns, and night
after night told how, at some particular quarter sessions, he had himself
said a better thing than ever Norbury uttered in his life. But the soul of
the club was Tom Connor--who, by his inexhaustible fund of humorous
anecdotes and droll stories, kept the table in a roar till a late hour in
the night, or rather to an early hour in the morning. Tom's stories
usually related to adventures which had happened to himself in his early
days; and as he had experienced innumerable vicissitudes of fortune, in
every part of the world, and under various characters, his narratives,
though not remarkable for their strict adherence to truth, were always
distinguished by their novelty.

One evening the club had met as usual, and Tom had mixed his first tumbler