"How could you expect it, Charley, my worthy nepos." said the
schoolmaster--"These sprigs of classicality, when once they get
under the wing of the collegium aforesaid, which, like a comfortable,
well-feathered old bird of the stubble, warms them into what is
ten times better than celebrity--_videlicet_, snug and independent
dulness--these sprigs, I say, especially, when their parents or
instructors happen to be poor, fight shy of the frieze and caubeen at
home, and avoid the risk of resuscitating old associations. Tom, Charley
looks--at least he did when I saw him to-day--very like a lad who is
more studious of the bottle than the book; but I will not prejudge the
youth, for I remember what he was while under my tuition. If he be
as cunning now and assiduous in the prosecution of letters as I found
him--if he be as cunning, as ripe at fiction, and of as unembarrassed
brow as he was in his schoolboy career, he will either hang, on the one
side, or rise to become lord chancellor or a bishop on the other."

"He will be neither the one nor the other then," said the prophetess,
"but something better both for himself and his friends."

"Is this by way of the oracular, Ginty?"

"You may take it so if you like," replied the female.

"And does the learned page of futurity present nothing in the shape of
a certain wooden engine, to which is attached a dangling rope, in
association with the youth? for in my mind his merits are as likely to
elevate him to the one as to the other. However, don't look like the
pythoness in her fury, Ginty; a joke is a joke; and here's that he
may be whatever you wish him! Ay, by the bones of Maro, this liquor is