Says I, "Go slow, Finny, go slow."
"We wish to hear," continued Mr. Finnigan, moderatin his stile summut, "from our townsman, Mr. Ward."
I beg'd to be declined, but it wan't no use. I rose amid a perfeck uproar of applause.
I said we had convened there in a meetin, as I understood it, or rather in a body, as it were, in reference to Ireland. If I knew my own hart, every one of us there, both grate and small had an impulse flowin in his boosum, "and consequentially," I added, we "will stick to it similar and in accordance therewith, as long as a spark of manhood, or the peple at large. That's the kind of man I be!"
Squire Thaxter interrupted me. The Squire feels the wrongs of Ireland deeply, on accounts of havin onct courted the widder of a Irish gentleman who had lingered in a loathsum dunjin in Dublin, placed there by a English tarvern-keeper, who despotically wanted him to pay for a quantity of chops and beer he had consoom'd. Besides, the Squire wants to be re-elected Justice of the Peace. "Mr. Ward," he said, "you've bin drinkin. You're under the infloo'nce of licker, sir!"
Says I, "Squire, not a drop of good licker has passed my lips in fifteen years.
[Cries of "Oh, here now, that won't do.">[
"It is troo," I said. "Not a drop of good licker has passed my lips in all that time. I don't let it pass 'em. I reach for it while it's goin by!" says I. "Squire, harness me sum more!"
"I beg pardon," said the Squire, "for the remark; you are sober; but what on airth are you drivin at?"
"Yes!" I said, "that's just it. That's what I've bin axin myself during the entire evenin. What is this grate meetin drivin at? What's all the grate Finian meetins drivin at all over the country?