THE MULLIGAN (OF BALLYMULLIGAN), AND HOW WE WENT TO MRS. PERKINS'S BALL.


I do not know where Ballymulligan is, and never knew anybody who did.
Once I asked the Mulligan the question, when that chieftain assumed a
look of dignity so ferocious, and spoke of "Saxon curiawsitee" in a
tone of such evident displeasure, that, as after all it can matter very
little to me whereabouts lies the Celtic principality in question, I
have never pressed the inquiry any farther.

I don't know even the Mulligan's town residence. One night, as he bade
us adieu in Oxford Street,--"I live THERE," says he, pointing down
towards Oxbridge, with the big stick he carries--so his abode is in that
direction at any rate. He has his letters addressed to several of
his friends' houses, and his parcels, &c. are left for him at various
taverns which he frequents. That pair of checked trousers, in which you
see him attired, he did me the favor of ordering from my own tailor,
who is quite as anxious as anybody to know the address of the wearer. In
like manner my hatter asked me, "Oo was the Hirish gent as 'ad ordered
four 'ats and a sable boar to be sent to my lodgings?" As I did not
know (however I might guess) the articles have never been sent, and the
Mulligan has withdrawn his custom from the "infernal four-and-nine-penny
scoundthrel," as he calls him. The hatter has not shut up shop in
consequence.

I became acquainted with the Mulligan through a distinguished countryman
of his, who, strange to say, did not know the chieftain himself. But
dining with my friend Fred Clancy, of the Irish bar, at Greenwich, the
Mulligan came up, "inthrojuiced" himself to Clancy as he said, claimed