carried both his arms hanging by his sides, motionless and at their
full length, like the pendulums of a clock that has ceased going. In his
head, neck, and chest there was no muscular action visible; he walked,
in fact, as if a milk-pail were upon his crown, or as if a single nod of
his would put the planets out of order. But the principal cause of the
similarity lay in his roundness, which resembled that of a pump, running
to a point, or the pigeon-house aforesaid, which is still better.

Denis, though a large man, was but a small farmer, for he rented only
eighteen acres of good land. His family, however, like himself, was
large, consisting of thirteen children, among whom Denis junior stood
pre-eminent. Like old Denis, he was exceedingly long-winded in argument,
pedantic as the schoolmaster who taught him, and capable of taking a
very comprehensive grasp of any tangible subject.

Young Denis's display of controversial talents was so remarkably
precocious, that he controverted his father's statements upon all
possible subjects, with a freedom from embarrassment which promised well
for that most distinguished trait in a controversialist--hardihood of
countenance. This delighted old Denis to the finger ends.

"Dinny, if he's spared," he would say, "will be a credit to us all yet.
The sorra one of him but's as manly as anything, and as longheaded as a
four-footed baste, so he is! nothing daunts or dashes him, or puts him
to an amplush: but he'll look you in the face so stout an' cute, an'
never redden or stumble, whether he's right or wrong, that it does one's
heart good to see him. Then he has such a laning to it, you see, that
the crathur 'ud ground an argument on anything, thin draw it out to a
norration an' make it as clear as rock-water, besides incensing you
so well into the rason of the thing, that Father Finnerty himself 'ud