BILLY KIRWAN AND THE FIRE-EATER. ONE day Billy Kirwan, a well-known Dublin bill broker of great wealth and equal shrewdness, (who flourished in the early part of the present century) was offered as he sat on his accustomed window-sill in the court-yard of the Commercial Buildings--a bundle of bills for discount by a merchant who had taken them in the way of business. It was Mr. Kirwan's boast that he instinctively knew bad "paper" by the feel of it. "There's bad 'paper' in your lot, I can perceive, sir, without the trouble to look over it, seriah tim et lite-rah-tim, remarked Billy, who had been originally intended by his pious Galway parents for the Church, and had in his boyhood a decent converse with the preliminaries of the classics. "Fænum habet in cornu," he continued, "as a body might say to a spavined horse. You had better remove it, if you please, sir, before I have anything to say to you; for I wouldn't touch it with a pair of kitchen tongs, much less dirty my hands with it." 66 "I am surprised to hear you say so, sir," said the merchant; and would you be pleased to mention what is in my hand that encounters your objection ?" "Why a certain acceptance signed H. D'Esterre," (the celebrated fire-eater and champion of the Dublin Corporation, afterwards shot by O'Connell); and if you must knowmy opinion, I would not advance the value of a brass button on all that a jackass could draw on the same security." "Good heavens! and why not?" "For a rayson I have; and nobody knows it better than Mr. D'Esterre himself," answered Kirwan. As Mr. Kirwan was sitting alone the same evening, enjoying his pipe and his glass of punch over one of M'Gee's leading articles, or, just as probable, one of Daniel O'Connell's earlier speeches in favor of Catholic Emancipation, the servant came in with a card from Colonel Henry. The Colonel very much regretted that it fell to his lot to deliver a hostile message to a gentleman of such respectability as Mr. Kirwan from one equally respectable and estimable as Mr. D'Esterre. He repeated the iujurious and insulting expressions which the gentleman whom he had the honor of addressing had made use of in speaking of his friend during the day to a certain merchant, in the Commercial Buildings, and which had travelled the rounds of the city before nightfall. He pointed out, moreover, the utter impossibility of Mr. D'Esterre allowing such a slur on his name and character to be uttered and sent to the world without demanding the satisfaction of a gentleman. "Then, Colonel, honey, come to the point, and tell me what it is you want," demanded Kirwan. "An apology or the alternative." "Which means that I must eat my words or fight?" "Most decidedly." It can't be done for the money." "What money?" said the Colonel. "Why, my money, to be sure; the money that your 'respectable' friend, Mr. D'Esterre, owes me this last couple of years; nothing more or less than a cool hundred, independent of both interest and expenses. I lent it to him first, not as a matter of business, but on his pledged word of honor that he'd return it to me at the time promised; an' upon my honor and sowl he hasn't done so from that day to this." The Colonel doubted what he had to do with the money question. "Everything," said Kirwan, “in the regard of your not having the ghost of an argument on your side when you ask me to apologize or fight." The Colonel still could not see it; but his opponent very soon made him, in this wise: He'd be a liar and a coward to apologize, or in any way retract what he said and still felt of D'Esterre, so long as D'Esterre chose to act dishonorably towards him; and to go out and fight him would be to act like the biggest fool in existence "Tare an' ages! Colonel," said Billy, "do you want me to fire against my own money? On the other hand, if D'Esterre hits me, he'll send me to the devil after all; and you know the Scripture says that out of hell there's no redemption !" "Very true indeed; and by no means an unreasonable way of putting it," observed Colonel Henry. "But," he added, will you, if I satisfy you on the money question " 66 If you pay me—that's the chat!" roared Billy. "Pay you! certainly; that's what I mean; but will you then fight?" "Like a Trojan, Colonel," cried Kirwan; "anything to oblige you; anything for peace and quietness." I shall see you to-morrow morning again, Mr. Kirwan," said the Colonel, rising and formally bowing to his host, who vainly endeavored to make him "take another jorum, just to show that there was no animosity between them. "You'll have your friend ready in the morning when I call?" asked Henry, as he turned for the last time. "That's my intintion," responded Kirwan; "and all my worldly affairs settled." Colonel Henry did not see the face of inimitable drollery that Mr. Kirwan assumed as he uttered the last observation, for his back was turned and he was half-way down the halldoor steps, hailing a passing cabman. Next morning the gallant bearer of cartel was at the house of the challenged party, who received him most graciously. "But your friend, Mr. Kirwan? I don't see the gentleman to whom I expected to be presented," exclaimed the Colonel, looking not a little surprised. "Leave that to me," Kirwan remarked, very coolly. "Business before pleasure, if you please; have you brought my money? Let's settle that before we proceed to the sentimental part of the matter.” Certainly," replied Henry; "here's a hundred-pound Bank of Ireland note at your service, which discharges my friend's obligation." "And here's a receipt for that same, with an apology for your friend, which he and you would be the most unraysonable men alive not to accept and be thankful." 66 What, then! you don't intend to fight after all?" exclaimed the Colonel, on hearing what appeared to him an extraordinary declaration, and perceiving the perfectly ridiculous result which his grave embassy had at length been brought to. "You won't fight," he repeated. "The divil a bit, Colonel, honey; and that's as sure as my name is Billy Kirwan. I unsay all I have said of your friend, and apologize to him and you in the handsomest manner." "I can't just at this moment see," ruminated the baffled envoy, "how my principal is to come out of this affair creditably in this fashion!" "He comes out of it with flying colors; for his fellow-citizens will think more of him when they hear he has paid his debts, than if he had shot Billy Kirwan," was the conclusive and unanswerable reply. THE history of the shorthorn cow, Dutchess 66th, which was sold in 1853, at Earl Ducie's sale, in England, to Colonel Morris, of Fordham, for 700 guineas, or $3,675, is remarkable as showing the actual value of one good breeding animal. From this cow, which was calved in November, 1850, there may be traced in direct descent a number of animals which have sold for about $5,000,000. THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. BY COLONEL THEODORE O'HARA. SHORTLY after the close of the Mexican war, the Legislature of Kentucky enacted that the remains of those of her sons who had fallen in that struggle, should be brought home and deposited beneath a monument erected to their memory by the State. The ceremony of depositing these sacred remains under the turf of the "Bloody Ground" was solemn and imposing, and is made memorable by the poem delivered on the occasion by a gallant Irish-American soldier, Colonel Theodore O'Hara, whose body, by another act of the Kentucky Legislature, was, some two years ago, brought from Alabama and laid among his comrades of the Mexican campaign, whose memories he has embalmed in imperishable verse. The following is the poem referred to : The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on life's parade shall meet On Fame's eternal camping ground No rumor of the foe's advance Now swells upon the wind, No troubled thought at midnight haunts No vision of the morrow's strife Nor braying horn nor screaming fife Their shivered swords are red with rust, Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, And plenteous funeral tears have washed And the proud forms, by battle gashed, |