"What?" said Mat, in an audible soliloquy, "is Irish life?" And then he answered the question himself as she remained silent. "A tragedy, a squalid tragedy!" But she looked at him cold, irresponsive, defiant, and he rushed away before the old man came back with the whiskey. The wreck of this girl's nature; her acceptance in full faith of the sordid and terrible gospel of loveless marriage; the omnipotence of even a little money in a land of abject and hopeless and helpless poverty, brought the realities of Irish life with a clearness to his mind more terrible than even uprooted houses and echoless streets. He accepted the invitation of a friend to take a row up the river, beautiful with its eternal and changeless beauty amid all this wreck of hopes and blasting of lives. They passed a small island. "What is that called," asked Mat of the boatman. "Dead Man's Island." "What did you say?" "Dead Man's Island." "A----h,----Dead--Man's--Island!" THE END. GOING ON FOOT TO ROME.--In these days, when pilgrims go to Rome and Jerusalem by railway and steamer, it is refreshing to hear that the old-fashioned pilgrim may still be found. The last of these appears to be Ignacio Martinez, a native of Valladolid, who has nearly completed his pilgrimage to the Holy Place begun two years ago. The Boys in Green. After reading the Reminiscences of the Ninth Massachusetts, Volunteers, published in late numbers of DONAHOE'S, it occurred to the writer that a few incidents which came under my own personal observation, in which that regiment figured, occurring over twenty-three years ago, may be of interest to the survivors of the gallant Ninth, or their descendants. It may also interest the general public, and your Irish-American readers in particular, for my experience will speak more particularly of the corps with which my fortunes were cast--Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher's Irish Brigade. It was originally composed of three regiments, viz., Sixty-Third New York, Eighty-Eighth New York, and Sixty-Ninth New York, all organized in New York City, but some of its companies hailing from Albany, Boston, etc. The writer of this was connected with the Albany Company K, Sixty-Third Regiment, in the capacity of "high private" when the regiment was organized. This paper is merely intended to give an account of a few incidents in which the brigade participated, not by any means as a history of that organization.