“'Very well, Mick,' says he; 'I'll explain it to you:--a big blackguard of a shark, that was on a travelling tour, happened to be going that way when Jim's boat was upset, and gobbled him up just as he got into the water: but, lo and behould! whin he'd got Jim's legs down his throat, and came to his bradien and big belly, divil a swallow could the shark swallow him:--and there Jim stuck so fast, that if the shark had taken fifty emetics before-hand, he couldn't have cast him up.--With that, Jim, finding his situation unpleasant, began to kick; and the shark, with that, tickled Jim's ribs with his teeth; but he couldn't bite clane through his big coat,--and the more Jim kicked, the more the shark tickled him; and up they wint, and down they wint; and my belief is, that Jim would have bate him, but the fish got suffocated, and sunk, just as Jim was gitting a pull at the whiskey-bottle, which he carried in his side pouch; and down they wint together, so sudden, that Jim, taken up as he was with the taste of the crature, didn't know he was drowned till they were both at the bottom.' “'Was Jimmy and the shark, the mermaid meeself saw thin?' says I. “'They was, Mick.' “'Thin bad luck to the pair o' them,' says I, 'for two impostors!--And how did your honour know this?' “'Wasn't I in the shark's belly all the time?' says he.--'Didn't he gobble me up with a salmon, that tried to take refuge in the place where meeself and a few friends laid tin days before?--A lobsther lived in Jim's pocket for a month; and he and all his family used to go out three days a week to pull Jim's nose, for fishing up two of their cousins once,--so they did.--I'd thank ye for a pinch of snuff.' “'And welcome, sir,' says I, houlding over the snisheen; 'meeself likes to hear news of my friends, sir,' says I; 'would your honour plaze to take a shaugh o' the doothien too?' And politeness, you know, made me offer him the pipe. “'Mick,' says he; 'is it meeself, or the likes o' me, that smokes?--I never took a goll o' the peepa in all my life:--and over and above that, Mick, I'd feel mightily obliged to you, if you'd blow your smoke higher, or be just ginteel and agreeable enough to sit the other side o' me: if you don't, you're a dirty blackguard, and bad luck to you, sir,' says he; 'for I've no chimney to my house.' With that, I just knocked out the backy from the pipe, and tould him, I didn't mind meeself, and I'd put away smoking at once. “'Mick,' says he, 'you'd nothing but ashes in your doothien; so the divil's thanks to you!' “'Sir,' says I, not noticing what he said,' that's a mighty nate little house you have of your own; I'd like to know who built it.' “'Faith! thin I did meeself, Mick,' says he; 'but I'd like your big finger the better, if it was outside my door.' “'Sir,' says I, 'if I'd such a nate little cabin, I'd marry Molly Malony at once. Doesn't your honour ever think of getting a wife?--or, may be, you're a widower?'