Equipped as we are for the conquest of comfort with fresh pipes, full mugs, and the flavor of a best of suppers still extant within our mouths, it may be an impertinence for one to moralize. And yet, as I go forward to this incident, I will premise that, in every least exigency of life, ill begets ill, while good springs from good and follows the doer with a profit. Such has been my belief; such, indeed, has been my unbroken experience; and the misfortunes of Connelly, and my relief of them, small matters in themselves, are in proof of what I say. At sixty I look back with envy on that decade which followed my issuing forth from Trinity College, when, hopeless, careless, purposeless beyond the moment, I wandered the face of the earth and fed or starved at the hands of chance-born opportunity. I was up or down or rich or poor, and, with an existence which ran from wine to ditch water and back again to wine, was happy. I recall how in those days of checkered fortune, wherein there came a proportion of one hour of shadow to one moment of sun, I was wont to think on riches and their possession. I would say to myself: “And should it so befall that I make my millions, I’ll have none about me but broken folk: I’ll refuse to so much as permit the acquaintance of a rich man.” I’ve been ever deeply controlled by the sentiment therein expressed. Sure it is, I’ve been incapable of the example of the Levite, and could never keep to the other side of the way when distress appealed. My youth was wild, and staid folk called it “vicious.” I squandered my fortune; melted it, as August melteth ice, while still at Trinity. It was my misfortune to reach my majority before I reached my graduation, and those two college years which ensued after I might legally write myself “man” and the wild days that filled them up, brought me to face the world with no more shillings than might take me to Australia. However, they were gay though graceless times--those college years; and Dublin, from Smock Alley to Sackville Street, may still remember them. Those ten years after quitting Dublin were years of hit or miss. I did everything but preach or steal. Yes, I even fought three prize-fights; and there were warped, distorted moments when, bloody but victorious, I believed it better to be a fighter than to be a bishop. But for the main, I drifted to the theaters and lived by the drama. Doubtless I was a wretched actor--albeit I felt myself a Kemble--but the stage was so far good to me it finally brought me--as an underling of much inconsequence--to the fair city of New York. I did but little for the drama, but it did much for me; it led me to America. And now that I’ve come to New York in this story, I’ve come to Connelly.