Neal now turned himself, like many a sage in similar circumstances, to philosophy; that is to say, he began to shake his head upon principle, after the manner of the schoolmaster. He would, indeed, have preferred the bottle upon principle; but there was no getting at the bottle except through the wife, and it so happened that by the time it reached him there was little consolation left in it. Neal bore all in silence; for silence, his friend had often told him, was a proof of wisdom. Soon after this, Neal one evening met Mr. O’Connor by chance upon a plank which crossed a river. This plank was only a foot in breadth, so that no two individuals could pass each other upon it. We cannot find words in which to express the dismay of both on finding that they absolutely glided past each other without collision. Both paused and surveyed each other solemnly; but the astonishment was all on the side of Mr. O’Connor. “Neal,” said the schoolmaster, “by all the household gods, I conjure you to speak, that I may be assured you live!” The ghost of a blush crossed the churchyard visage of the tailor. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “why the divil did you tempt me to marry a wife?” “Neal,” said his friend, “answer me in the most solemn manner possible; throw into your countenance all the gravity you can assume; speak as if you were under the hands of the hangman, with the rope about your neck, for the question is indeed a trying one which I am about to put. Are you still ‘blue-moulded for want of a beating’?” The tailor collected himself to make a reply; he put one leg out--the very leg which he used to show in triumph to his friend, but, alas, how dwindled! He opened his waistcoat and lapped it round him until he looked like a weasel on its hind legs. He then raised himself up on his tiptoes, and, in an awful whisper, replied, “No!!! the divil a bit I’m blue-mowlded for want of a batin’!” The schoolmaster shook his head in his own miserable manner; but, alas! he soon perceived that the tailor was as great an adept at shaking the head as himself. Nay, he saw that there was a calamitous refinement, a delicacy of shake in the tailor’s vibrations, which gave to his own nod a very commonplace character.