I assented, like a good patriot, but not without misgivings that he might have been just as happy in another selection of our good gifts. "I have known many of your countrymen," resumed he, "and they all impressed me with the same esteem. All alike frugal, temperate, and tranquilly disposed." "Just so, sir; and the cruelty is, nobody gives them credit for it!" "Ah, my son, there you are in error. The Old World may be, and indeed I have heard that it is, ungenerous; but its prejudices cannot cross the ocean. Here we estimate men, not by _our_ prejudices, but by _their_ merits. Here we recognize the Irishman as Nature has made him,--docile, confiding, and single-hearted; slow to anger, and ever ready to control his passions!" "That's exactly his portrait, Father!" said I, enthusiastically. "Without a double of any kind,--a creature that does not know a wile or a stratagem!" The priest seemed so captivated by my patriotism and my generous warmth that he sat down beside me, and we continued to make Ireland still our theme, each vying with the other who could say most in praise of that country. It was at the close of a somewhat long disquisition upon the comparative merits of Ireland and the Garden of Eden,--in which, I am bound to say, the balance inclined to the former,--that the Padre, as if struck by a sudden thought, remarked,-- "You are the very first of your nation I ever met in a frame of mind disposed to melancholy! I have just been running over, to myself, all the Irishmen I ever knew, and I cannot recall one that had a particle of gloom or sorrow about him." "Nor had I, Father," said I, with emotion; "nor did I know what sorrow was, till three days back! I was light-hearted and happy; the world went well with me, and I was content with the world. I will not trouble you with my story; enough when I say that I came abroad to indulge a taste for adventure and enterprise, and that the New World has not disappointed my expectations. If I spent money a little too freely, an odd grumble or so from 'the governor' was the darkest cloud that shaded my horizon. An only son, perhaps I pushed that prerogative somewhat too far; but our estate is unencumbered, and my father's habits are the reverse of extravagant,--for a man of his class, I might call them downright rustic in simplicity. Alas! why do I think of these things? I have done with them forever." "Nay, nay, you must not give way thus. It is very unlikely that one young as you are can have any real guilt upon his conscience." "Not yet, Father," said I, with a shudder,--"not yet; but who can tell how it may be with me to-morrow or next day? What a different answer should I have to give your question then!" "This is some fancy,--some trick of a warm and ill-regulated imagination, my son."