The schoolmaster having finished the _De Profundis_, was, as is usual, treated to glass of whiskey--a circumstance which just advanced him to such a degree of fluency and easy assurance as was necessary properly to develop the peculiarities of his character.

Having witnessed Bryan's failure at consolation, attended as it was by the clamorous grief of the family, he deemed it his duty, especially as he had just taken some part in the devotions, to undertake the task in which Bryan had been so unsuccessful.
"Thomas M'Mahon," said he, "I'm disposed to blush--do you hear me, I say?
I am disposed to blush, I repate, for your want of--he doesn't hear me:--will you pay attention?
I am really disposed to blush"-- and as he uttered the words he stirred M'Mahon by shaking his shoulders two or three times, in order to gain his attention.
"Are you ?" replied the other, replying in an absent manner to his words.
"God help you then, and assist you, for it's few can do it." "Can do what ?" "Och, I don't know; whatever you wor sayin'." "Patience, my good friend, Thomas M'Mahon.

I would call you Tom familiarly, but that you are in affliction, and it is well known that every one in affliction is, or at least ought to be, treated with respect and much sympathetical consolation.

You are now in deep sorrow; but don't you knows that death is the end of all things?
and believe me there are many objects in this world which a wise and experienced man would lose wid much greater regret than he would a mere wife.

Think, for instance, how many men there are--dreary and subdued creatures--who dare not call their souls, if they have any, or anything else they do possess, their own; think, I repate, of those who would give nine-tenths of all they are worth simply to be in your present condition! Wretches who from the moment they passed under the yoke matrimonial, to which all other yokes are jokes, have often heard of liberty but never enjoyed it for one single hour--the Lord help them!" "Amen!" exclaimed M'Mahon, unconsciously.
"Yes," proceeded Finigan, "unfortunate devils whose obstinacy has been streaked by a black mark, or which ought rather to be termed a black and blue mark, for that is an abler and more significant illustration, Poor quadrupeds who have lived their whole miserable lives as married men under an iron dynasty; and who know that the thunderings of Jupiter himself, if he were now in vogue, would be mere music compared to the fury of a conjugal tongue when agitated by any one of the thousand causes that set it a-going so easily.