Stone," however, was their principal duty. Larry gave it a particularly
honest smack, and Sheelah impressed it with all the ardor of a devotee.
Having refreshed themselves in the tent, they returned home, and, in
somewhat less than a year from that period, found themselves the happy
parents of an heir to the half-acre, no less a personage than young
Phelim, who was called after St. Phelim, the patron of the "Lucky
Stone."

The reader perceives that Phelim was born under particularly auspicious
influence. His face was the herald of affection everywhere.

From the moment of his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to
have a dispute. Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one
unchanging honeymoon. Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would
have mattered not a _crona baun_. Phelim, on the contrary, promised to
be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who
had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry said, "wid the outs an'
ins, the ups an' downs of his face, the darlin' swaddy!"

For the first ten years of his life Phelim could not be said to owe
the tailor much; nor could the covering which he wore be, without more
antiquarian loire than we can give to it, exactly classed under any
particular term by which the various parts of human dress are known. He
himself, like some of our great poets, was externally well acquainted
with the elements. The sun and he were particularly intimate; wind and
rain were his brothers, and frost also distantly related to him. With
mud he was hand and glove, and not a bog in the parish, or a quagmire
in the neighborhood, but sprung up under Phelim's tread, and threw him
forward with the brisk vibration of an old acquaintance. Touching his
dress, however, in the early part of his life, if he was clothed with