And a man she has in me," cries Kirby.'

As to his exact age:

"'Write me down sixty-three," cries Kirby.'

I have always maintained that it was an understatement. We must
remember, it was not Kirby speaking, but the song-writer. Kirby would
not, in my opinion, have numbered years he was proud of below their due
quantity. He was more, if he died at ninety-one; and Chillon Switzer
John Kirby, born eleven months after the elopement, was, we know, twenty-
three years old when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed him
little besides a law-suit with the Austrian Government, and the care of
Carinthia Jane, the second child of this extraordinary union; both
children born in wedlock, as you will hear. Sixty-three, or sixty-seven,
near upon seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins with
groans and weak knees, Kirby was a match for his juniors, which they
discovered.

Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincolnshire squire of an
ancient stock, was proud of his blood, and claimed descent from a chief
of the Danish rovers.

'"What's rank to me!" cries Kirby;
"A titled lass let her be,
But unless my plans miscarry,
I'll show her when we marry;
As brave a pedigree," cries Kirby.'

That was the song-writer's answer to the charge that the countess had