"Just as we were talking a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind. 'Ah! then, sir,' said I, 'will you drop me on the ship, if you please?' 'We are not fair over it,' said he. 'We are,' said I. 'We are not,' said he; 'if I dropped you now, you would go splash into the sea.' 'I would not,' says I; 'I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now at once.' "'If you must, you must,' said he. 'There, take your own way;' and he opened his claw, and faith he was right,--sure enough, I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night's rest, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say; but lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold salt water, till there wasn't a dry stitch upon my whole carcase; and I heard somebody saying--'twas a voice I knew too--'Get up, you drunken brute, out of that,' and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water, which she was splashing all over me; for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own. "'Get up,' said she again; 'and of all places in the parish, would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Carrigaphooka? An uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.' And sure enough I had; for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales, driving me through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the great ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I'd lie down in the same spot again, I know that." * * * * * MOTHER BUNCH'S CLOSET NEWLY BROKE OPEN; CONTAINING RARE SECRETS OF NATURE AND ART, TRIED AND EXPERIENCED BY LEARNED PHILOSOPHERS, And recommended to all ingenious young men and maids, teaching them, in a natural way, how to get good wives and husbands. Approved by several that have made trial of them; it being the product of forty-nine years' study. _By our loving Friend Poor Tom, for the King, a lover of Mirth, but a hater of Treason._ IN TWO PARTS. PART I. Reading over many ancient Histories, it was my chance to meet with this story of an old woman who lived in the west, who took delight in studying her fortune. When she found herself full twenty years old, she thought her luck worse than some who were married at fifteen or sixteen, which much troubled her mind; but to prevent all doubts she resolved to try a story she had often heard her mother talk of, and, finding it true, she resolved to teach other maidens.