to-morrow's dinner, when they're coming to meet us;--or silence their small but very terrible voices, by whistling the burthen of an old song: for,--do you mark?--they won't be served so: they will be seen; they will speak; and, faith! it's bear them we must, whether we will or no. We may have fancied them dead and gone, years ago; but their ghosts start up and surround our death-beds, and clamour so, that we can't but listen to them: and what's most awful, they make a man his own judge; and no earthly judge is so impartial as a man is of himself, when his people are just wishing him good-b'ye for ever. For when we get on the brink of life and death, and know that it's ten to one we'll be dead by the morning, and it's just midnight already;--when we think that in a few hours our ears will be deaf, and our eyes blind, and we can't wag a finger, and our cold white corpse will be stretched out on a board,--motionless, helpless, good for nothing, and lumber more than anything else;--when we know, that, much as we thought of ourselves, the sun will rise, and the birds sing, and the flowers look beautiful, and the ox be yoked to the plough, and the chimneys smoke, and the pot be boiled, and the world go on without us, as well as if we'd never been in it;--then's the time, I say, we get our vanity cut up by the roots, and feel what atoms we've been in it:--and then's the time too, that the soul,--just before pluming her wings, and having half shaken off the dross of humanity,--becomes strong as the body gets weak, and won't be bamboozled, but calls up all our sins past, and places them stedfastly before our eyes; and if we've done wrong--that is, much of it,--a big black bird stretches out her great wings and flutters, brooding like a weight of cold lead, on our hearts; and conscience, though we've contrived to keep her down all our lives, then starts up, taking advantage of our helplessness, and reigns in fall power.--But what's all this to Mick Maguire? you'll say.--Faith! then, not much: I began with an idea of getting to him in a few words, but was led astray, by noticing the death of the young woman I mentioned as being ruined by the gift of a brother, who meant it for her good. And you'll think it odd, may be, that the likes o' me casts over things so sariously: but I do, and there's nothing plazes me more than so doing, when I'm left alone here by myself, for hours and hours together, while all that's near and dear to me is out upon the waves, the mighty roar of which, as they break upon the rocks about me, I hear night and day; and the sound o' them, and solitude, begets sarious thoughts; and so they should, in one that's gone sixty. There's never a day but I think o' death, so that I'm sure I'll be able to meet him firmly when he knocks at the gates of life for me, and bids me come. If I could go about, I'd not have such oceans of odd, out o' the way thoughts, consarning various things; but here I