There was a period--there often is, in similar cases--during which it was doubtful, if the celebrated James Otis was a sane or an insane man. During that period, he was engaged for the plaintiff, in a cause, in which Mr. Marshall was a witness, for the defendant. After a tedious cross examination, Mr. Otis perceived the impossibility of perplexing the witness, or driving him into any discrepancy; and, in a moment of despair, his mind, probably, not being perfectly balanced, he lifted his finger, and shaking it, knowingly, at the witness, exclaimed--"_Ah, Tommy Marshall, Tommy Marshall, I know you!_" "_And what do you know of me, sir?_" cried the witness, doubling his fist in the very face of Mr. Otis, and stamping on the floor--"_I know you're a tailor, Tommy!_" No. XCI. Wake--Vigil--Wæcan--import one and the same thing. So we are informed, by that learned antiquary, John Whitaker, in his History of Manchester, published in 1771. Originally, this was a festival, kept by watching, through the night, preceding the day, on which a church was dedicated. We are told, by Shakspeare-- He that outlives this day, and sees old age, Will yearly, on the _vigil_, feast his neighbors, And say _tomorrow_ is Saint Crispian. These vigils, like the _agapæ_, or love-feasts, fell, erelong, into disrepute, and furnished occasion, for disgraceful revelry and riot. The Irish _Wake_, as it is popularly called, however it may have sprung from the same original stock, is, at present, a very different affair. Howling, at a wake, is akin to the ululation of the mourning women of Greece, Rome, and Judea, to which I have alluded, in a former number. The object of the Irish _Wake_ is to rouse the spirit, which, otherwise, it is apprehended, might remain inactive, unwilling, or unable, to quit its mortal frame--to _wake_ the soul, not precisely, "by tender strokes of art," but by long-continued, nocturnal wailings and howlings. In practice, it has ever been accounted extremely difficult, to get the Irish soul fairly off, either upward or downward, without an abundance of intoxicating liquor. The philosophy of this is too high for me--I cannot attain unto it. I know not, whether the soul goes off, in a fit of disgust, at the senseless and insufferable uproar, or is fairly frightened out of its tabernacle. This I know, that boon companions, and plenty of liquor are the very last means I should think of employing, to induce a true-born Irishman, to give up the ghost. I have read with pleasure, in the Pilot, a Roman Catholic paper of this city, an editorial discommendation of this preposterous custom.