where we're going and what we came out of. No wonder they call it
an age of despair, when you see the big wigs filing up and down the
thoroughfares with a great advertisement board on their shoulders,
proclaiming no information to the multitude, but a blank note of
interrogation addressed to Providence, as if an answer from above would
be vouchsafed to their impudence! They haven't the first principles of
good manners. And some of 'm in a rage bawl the answer for themselves.
Hear that! No, Phil; No, Pat, no: devotion's good policy.--You're not
drinking! Are you both of ye asleep? why do ye leave me to drone away
like this, when it 's conversation I want, as in the days of our first
parents, before the fig-leaf?--and you might have that for scroll and
figure on the social banner of the hypocritical Saxon, who's a
gormandising animal behind his decency, and nearer to the Arch-devourer
Time than anything I can imagine: except that with a little exertion you
can elude him. The whisky you've got between you 's virgin of the
excise. I'll pay double for freepeaty any day. Or are you for claret,
my lads? No? I'm fortified up here to stand a siege in my old round
tower, like the son of Eremon that I am. Lavra Con! Con speaks at last!
I don't ask you, Pat, whether you remember Maen, who was born dumb, and
had for his tutors Ferkelne the bard and Crafting the harper, at pleasant
Dinree: he was grandson of Leary Lore who was basely murdered by his
brother Cova, and Cova spared the dumb boy, thinking a man without a
tongue harmless, as fools do: being one of their savings-bank tricks,
to be repaid them, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns
at compound interest, have no fear. So one day Maen had an insult put
on him; and 'twas this for certain: a ruffian fellow of the Court swore
he couldn't mention the name of his father; and in a thundering fury Maen
burst his tongue-tie, and the Court shouted Lavra Maen: and he had to go
into exile, where he married in the middle of delicious love-adventures
the beautiful Moira through the cunning of Craftine the harper. There's