Thus admonished, with a desperate effort poor Jimmy proceeded to inform me that the cause of all his woe and waste of flesh was “Betsy Kelly, an’ the urchint”---- Here he stuck fast, and I waited in vain for the finishing of the sentence. I next looked to the merry priest for an explanation, but I found that it was equally fruitless to expect one from him _then_. He had fallen back in his chair, in a fit of (to me inexplicable) laughter; and the confused Delany, still more confounded, took the opportunity to escape from the room, saying, as he retreated, “I’ll lave it all to his rivirince!--let him tell what he will--I won’t deny it.” “A fair stage for a fertile imagination, Father Connellan?” said I. “Egad, there is no occasion for a fertile imagination in _this_ case,” he replied. “Too true it is that the drama of every-day life surpasses that exhibited on the stage. Now, here is my poor Jimmy--_fiddle-string_ I may call him, because I play upon him daily, and he is almost reduced to one. If an actor ever so clever were to show off _his_ blunders and absurdities on the stage, he’d be pelted to a mummy, or hooted into a coal-hole for the rest of his days, for attempting (mind) to impose on a discerning public with an outrageous caricature of nature. _Baithershin!_ let them come to Father Connellan’s cabin for a week, and I’ll promise them more amusement for _nothing_ than they could get at the theatre in a year, and pay dearly for it. But the farce is drawing to a conclusion now.” “_Farce_, call you it? My good sir, to look at poor Jimmy, I should suppose he has been enacting a very deep tragedy indeed, and that the bowl or dagger must end it.” “Or a marl-hole, or his garters,” said his reverence laughing! “But is it possible,” continued he, “that you have not dived into the mystery yet? Is it possible that I, a poor secluded priest, dead to the world these twenty years, minding nothing but my breviary, the souls of my flock, the Pope’s bulls, and--and an occasional beef-steak and glass of punch, was up to the secret in a trice, while you, a gay member of society, are still in the dark? What direful, by me unmentionable disease, doth these four ugly, sinful capitals spell, L, O, V, E?” “Love!--Ha! ha! ha! So Jimmy, poor Jimmy, is a lover! ‘Oh, Cupid, thou _urchint_,’ as thy woe-begone disciple calls thee, thou wert not blind, but _blind-folded_; thou stolest a peep, and the barbed dart that rankles in the heart of poor Jimmy was directed with laughter-loving malice! Pray tell me, reverend Father, was the heroine--for heroine she must have been, to have achieved such a victory over dullness--a living woman? or did she smite him through the pages of a book? for I recollect his reading mania at one time.”