MEMS.

OF THE NORTH CORK.
At six o'clock I had the pleasure of presenting the worthy Doctor Finucane to our mess, taking at the same time an opportunity, unobserved by him, to inform three or four of my brother officers that my friend was really a character, abounding in native drollery, and richer in good stories than even the generality of his countrymen.
Nothing could possibly go on better than the early part of the evening.
Fin, true to his promise, never once alluded to what I could plainly perceive was ever uppermost in his mind, and what with his fund of humour, quaintness of expression, and quickness at reply, garnished throughout by his most mellifluous brogue, the true "Bocca Corkana," kept us from one roar of laughter to another.

It was just at the moment in which his spirits seemed at their highest, that I had the misfortune to call upon him for a story, which his cousin Father Malachi had alluded to on the ever-memorable evening at his house, and which I had a great desire to hear from Fin's own lips.

He seemed disposed to escape telling it, and upon my continuing to press my request, drily remarked, "You forget, surely, my dear Mr.Lorrequer, the weak condition I'm in; and these gentlemen here, they don't know what a severe illness I've been labouring under lately, or they would not pass the decanter so freely down this quarter." I had barely time to throw a mingled look of entreaty and menace across the table, when half-a-dozen others, rightly judging from the Doctor's tone and serio-comic expression, that his malady had many more symptoms of fun than suffering about it, called out together-- "Oh, Doctor, by all means, tell us the nature of your late attack--pray relate it." "With Mr.Lorrequer's permission I'm your slave, gentlemen," said Fin, finishing off his glass.
"Oh, as for me," I cried, "Dr.Finucane has my full permission to detail whatever he pleases to think a fit subject for your amusement." "Come then, Doctor, Harry has no objection you see; so out with it, and we are all prepared to sympathise with your woes and misfortunes, whatever they be." "Well, I am sure, I never could think of mentioning it without his leave; but now that he sees no objection--Eh, do you though?
if so, then, don't be winking and making faces at me; but say the word, and devil a syllable of it I'll tell to man or mortal." The latter part of this delectable speech was addressed to me across the table, in a species of stage whisper, in reply to some telegraphic signals I had been throwing him, to induce him to turn the conversation into any other channel.
"Then, that's enough," continued he sotto voce--"I see you'd rather I'd not tell it." "Tell it and be d____d," said I, wearied by the incorrigible pertinacity with which the villain assailed me.

My most unexpected energy threw the whole table into a roar, at the conclusion of which Fin began his narrative of the mail-coach adventure.
I need not tell my reader, who has followed me throughout in these my Confessions, that such a story lost nothing of its absurdity, when entrusted to the Doctor's powers of narration; he dwelt with a poet's feeling upon the description of his own sufferings, and my sincere condolence and commiseration; he touched with the utmost delicacy upon the distant hints by which he broke the news to me; but when he came to describe my open and undisguised terror, and my secret and precipitate retreat to the roof of the coach, there was not a man at table that was not convulsed with laughter---and, shall I acknowledge it, even I myself was unable to withstand the effect, and joined in the general chorus against myself.
"Well," said the remorseless wretch, as he finished his story, "if ye haven't the hard hearts to laugh at such a melancholy subject.