“The French know how to reconcile the two natures; they are brave, and light-hearted too.”
“And the Irish, Mister Charles,—the Irish especially,” said Billy, proudly; “for I was alludin' to the English in what I said last. The 'versatile ingenium' is all our own.
He goes into a tent and he spends half a-crown,
Comes out, meets a friend, and for love knocks him down.
There 's an elegant philosophy in that, now, that a Saxon would never see! For it is out of the very fulness of the heart, ye may remark, that Pat does this, just as much as to say, 'I don't care for the expense!' He smashes a skull just as he would a whole dresser of crockery-ware! There's something very grand in that recklessness.”
The tone of the remark, and a certain wild energy of his manner, showed that poor Billy's faculties were slightly under the influences of the Tuscan grape; and the youth smiled at sight of an excess so rare.
“How hard it must be,” said Massy, “to go back to the workaday routine of life after one of these outbursts,—to resume not alone the drudgery, but all the slavish observances that humble men yield to great ones!”
“'Tis what Bacon says, 'There's nothing so hard as unlearnin' anything;' and the proof is how few of us ever do it! We always go on mucin' old thoughts with new,—puttin' different kinds of wine into the same glass, and then wonderin' we are not invigorated!”
“You 're in a mood for moralizing to-night, I see, Billy,” said the other, smiling.
“The levities of life always puts me on that thrack, just as too bright a day reminds me to take out an umbrella with me.”
“Yet I do not see that all your observation of the world has indisposed you to enjoy it, or that you take harsher views of life the closer you look at it.”