‘And thou vile fraction of a man!’ thundered I in full storm, and darting a withering scowl that almost put the little animal into the earth, ‘hast thou no more reverence for thy church than that, to suit thy petty interests, thou wouldst see thy venerable parish priest, of seventy-six, figure in a _pair of yellow buckskin breeches_, like a huntsman or postilion? Away with them, sirrah, or by the soul of your grandmother in purgatory--where she shall stay those hundred years for your assurance--these same breeches shall case your own diminutive limbs to-morrow, and you placed upon the altar as an exhibition, with _Tally-ho!_ in capitals upon your back. What a beautiful spectacle for the congregation!’ Soon I had the dismayed stitcher upon his knees, deprecating my wrath, and recounting the particulars I have already related in explanation; ending with ‘my backward blessing on Jimmy Delany!’ intending of course that all my ire should fall upon the real delinquent. And so it would, but that there is something in the very name ‘Jimmy Delany’ that invariably mollifies me. I knew he did nothing out of malice or mischief, but from the greatest simplicity; and when I demanded to see the book he was then busy with, and his thumb marks pointing to the ‘town in danger of being besieged,’ I was at home in the matter at once. But I had to pay for the leather, and the tailor for making the breeches, which I lost afterwards at a game of backgammon with Squire Hooligan. About a month afterwards, a nephew of mine, a midshipman, came on a visit to me, bringing with him some volumes of Cook’s Voyages. These books seemed to have a fascinating charm for him, but it was nothing to the charm they had for Misther Delany. It was downright idolatry--he knelt to them, I believe--I know he slept with them, ate with them, and drank with them, and finally became so incorporated with the work--he was its hero! Yes! all the old ‘ruling passions’ were clean forgotten, and Captain Cook was lord of the ascendant. Oh! how the young seaman laughed, and roared, and flung himself on the ground again and again, in ecstacies of mirth, when he discovered what a jewel of a shipmate Providence had provided for him in an old priest’s house in the country, where he had expected little but long faces and long fasts!--how he kicked up his heels in all the obstreperousness of a sailor’s joy! Still the ludicrous perfections of my poor Jimmy unfolded themselves--still his matchless simplicity, his inconceivable infatuation under the dominion of the new ‘idea,’ became apparent! And no wonder; for surely his wholesale assumption of the renowned navigator, his pompous action, and conversations _in character_, and the total and absolute oblivion of all former ties and duties, altogether were enough to raise laughter under the ribs of Death, and was almost too much for the living. If I asked him, after several hours’ daily absences, where he had been, his prompt reply would be,