suspicious if the middle class followed their example? The case was not quite the same, though; for while the Knights of Tara courted observation and loved to be seen lounging in cambric shirts and broidered slippers, with their hair in curl-papers, the members of the other fencing club kept rigorously closed doors, through which no one ever heard the familiar cry, sharp as a pistol-crack, of 'Ha! a hit!' One evening, shortly after Tone's departure, there was a full gathering in the chambers on the second floor which looked on the grand quadrangle. It was necessary to instal with solemn rites a new chief in place of the wanderer, and to fix on a distinct plan of operations for enlarging the limits of the society. Tone had left his mantle to Thomas Addis Emmett as the oldest and wisest of the band--he was thirty-five--and so, in obedience to his last wishes, the editor of the _Press_ was duly elected to the dangerous pre-eminence. Submitting to his brother's entreaties, he commenced his reign by administering the oath to young Robert, the dreamy lad of seventeen, which was done with awful ceremonies, as became the doings of conspirators. Blinds were drawn for a few minutes that no prying gaze might penetrate the Holy of Holies; then all sat down, with the neophyte standing in their midst, while their president read through the constitution. Then the oath was administered upon the Scriptures, which, together with the constitution, were clasped on the bared breast, and after that a lock of hair was cut away under the queue behind, and a formula learnt by heart, by means of which one member could recognise another. It was touching to look on these brothers standing side by side, the elder receiving the younger into a fraternity, each unit of which, before many months were out, might possibly be called upon to meet an ignominious death. Thomas was big and burly, with a sedate cast of countenance which betokened thought, whilst Robert was slight of build, and looked almost like a girl, as with eyes fixed on space he repeated the strange sentences, his face aglow with enthusiasm, his body trembling like a leaf. 'Are you straight?' 'I am.' 'How straight?' 'As straight as a rush.' 'Go on then?' 'In truth and trust; in unity and liberty.' 'What have you in your hand?' 'A green bough.' 'Where did it grow?' 'In America.' 'Where did it bud?' 'In France.' 'Where will you plant it?' 'In the Crown of Great Britain.' 'God be with you then, and with us all,' Thomas concluded; 'and now a glass all round to the health of the new member.' The pledge was gravely accepted, each one raising his beaker and saying: 'To the diffusion of light!' ere he drained its contents and replaced it on the table bottom upwards.