temerity be, with all its melancholy consequences, upon your own
head."

"Come," said the tailor; "it wasn't to hear you groaning to the
tune o' 'Dhrimmindhoo,' or 'The old woman rockin' her cradle,' that
I came; but to know if you could help me in makin' out the wife.
That's the discoorse."

"Look at me, Neal," said the schoolmaster, solemnly. "I am at this
moment, and have been any time for the last fifteen years, a living
CAVETO against matrimony. I do not think that earth possesses such
a luxury as a single solitary life. Neal, the monks of old were
happy men; they were all fat and had double chins; and, Neal, I
tell you that all fat men are in general happy. Care cannot come
at them so readily as at a thin man; before it gets through the
strong outworks of flesh and blood with which they are surrounded,
it becomes treacherous to its original purpose, joins the cheerful
spirits it meets in the system, and dances about the heart in all
the madness of mirth; just like a sincere ecclesiastic who comes to
lecture a good fellow against drinking, but who forgets his lecture
over his cups, and is laid under the table with such success that
he either never comes to finish his lecture, or comes often to be
laid under the table. Look at me, Neal, how wasted, fleshless, and
miserable I am. You know how my garments have shrunk in, and what
a solid man I was before marriage. Neal, pause, I beseech you;
otherwise you stand a strong chance of becoming a nonentity like
myself."

"I don't care what I become," said the tailor; "I can't think
that you'd be so unreasonable as to expect that any o' the Malones