to me hungry; and now--There's a terrible len'th of time in three
year. I wouldn't ha' believed he'd ha' done it on me."






THE RIVAL DREAMERS

BY JOHN BANIM





Mr. Washington Irving has already given to the public a version
of an American legend, which, in a principal feature, bears some
likeness to the following transcript of a popular Irish one. It
may, however, be interesting to show this very coincidence between
the descendants of a Dutch transatlantic colony and the native
peasantry of Ireland, in the superstitious annals of both. Our
tale, moreover, will be found original in all its circumstances,
that alluded to only excepted.

Shamus Dempsey returned a silent, plodding, sorrowful man, though
a young one, to his poor home, after seeing laid in the grave
his aged, decrepit father. The last rays of the setting sun were
glorious, shooting through the folds of their pavilion of scarlet
clouds; the last song of the thrush, chanted from the bough nearest