And then, there is the jovial, careless, free-hearted, yet quarrelsome Irishman, who thinks a new Jerusalem without a little whiskey still in one corner of it,—“over beyant the throne, and forninst the back dure,” for instance—would be just no Paradise at all. I believe there is not a race of men on the face of the earth—from Behring Straits to Terra del Fuego, round and about, over and under, or down either quarter—that can extract the same genuine soul-satisfying bliss from a flattened nose or swelled lip, that a real, irrepressible, County Kerry Irishman can. Let him have that, and a good stiff horn of whiskey to keep the blood running freely, and my advice to you is, keep upon the other side of the street, if you intend to sit for your picture that afternoon, or visit your sweetheart that evening, or expect to take up the collection during divine worship the next Sunday. At such a time he is no respecter of persons, this set-up Irishman. You may be the Rector of the finest cathedral in the place, the mayor of the city, the judge of the supreme court, or even the governor of the state, and should your hat chance to blow off and roll in front of him,—though it should cost him a fall upon the pavement,—that man will kick it. I tell you he will kick it, and soundly too. He will make no mincing about it, but go for it, as he would for his neighbor’s pig, should he find it in his garden of cabbages. At such he is full of words also, and can bestow upon the stone that trips him up the same flow of abuse that he can shower upon the man who assists him to his feet. THE CONTENTED FROG. The frog that once in Selby’s dam Its weird music shed, Now lies as mute as stranded clam— Because that frog is dead. So sleeps the plague of former days, So noisy nights are o’er, And he now on the pond decays Who long cried, “Sleep no more!” A frog upon a log one day In meditation sat, And gazed upon his pond, that lay Still as a tanner’s vat. No fish swam in his fetid lake, No current seaward run; But hemmed by grasses, weed, and brake, It mantled in the sun. [Illustration: IN MEDITATION.] At length from revery he woke, And thus to free his mind, He in the gutt’ral jargon spoke Peculiar to his kind:— “Give me my slimy pool,” quoth he, “Before a river wide, Where cranes are found, still wading round, And hungry fishes glide. “Here light first dawn’d, here was I spawn’d, And here I make my home— Those longest live who’re not inclined In foreign parts to roam. “Upon this log, or stone, I sit, The water-fly to view, Or watch the glossy whirligig Describe his circles true. “How foolish are some pollywogs; Before they’ve lost their tails They often class themselves with frogs, And leave their native swales;