"'Wi' Tippeny they fear nae evil,
Wi' Usquebagh they'll face the Devil.'"
"Now, don't be comparing an Irishman, if you plaze, Adjutant, to a scratch-back Scotchman. The raal Irishman has fire enough in his bluid; but there's no denying a glass of potheen is the stuff to regulate it. Talk about Rigulars or Volunteers fighting;—it's the officers must do their duty, and there's no fear thin of the men."
"What did you enlist for, anyway, Terence?" broke in a Second Lieutenant.
"It's aisy seeing that it wasn't for a Lieutenant's pay," retorted Terence, to the amusement of the crowd, and then, as earnestness gathered upon his countenance, he continued: "I enlisted for revinge, and there's little prospect of my seeing a chance for it."
"For revenge?" said several.
"Yis, for revinge. I had worked early and late at a liv'ry stable, like a nagur, to pay the passage money of my only brother to this country. Faith, he was a broth of a boy, the pride of all the McCarthy's,"—tears welled in his eyes as he continued,—"just three years younger than mysilf, a light, ruddy, nately put togither lad as iver left the bogs; and talk about fightin'!—the divil was niver in him but in a fight, and thin you'd think he was all divil. That was Patrick's sport, and fight he would, ivery chance, from the time whin he was a bit of a lad, ten years ould, and bunged the ould schoolteacher's eyes in the parish school-house. Will, he got a good berth in a saloon in the Bowery, where they used Patrick in claning out the customers whin they got noisy, and he'd do it nately too, to the satisfaction of his employer. He did well till a recruiting Sergeant—bad luck to him—that knew the McCarthys in the ould country, found him out, and they drank and talked about ould times, and the Sergeant tould him that the army was the place for Irishmen,—that there would be lots of fightin'. The chance of a fight took Patrick, and nixt day he left the city in a blouse, as Fourth Corporal in an Irish Rigiment, and a prouder looking chappie, as his own Captain tould me, niver marched down Broadway. And thin to think he was murthered by my own Gineral."
"Who? How was that?" interrupted half a dozen at once.
"Gineral Patterson, you see, to be shure."