“Well, sir, an' isn't this a counthry worth fightin' for?”
Confound the fellow! even though he be bright-faced and seems good-natured. I wish those people who are eternally talking about fighting and never doing it—except among themselves—would stop talking, or, if they cannot do anything better, go out, take a good “licking” manfully, and be done with it. Daring and doing, even if one gets the worst of it, is better than loud talking and nothing doing. I hate the vox et præterea nihil. We have had too much of it.
“Faith,” says the guard, “it's the fine, healthy-looking childer ye've got. Shure, they don't look like Yankee childer at all, at all.”
“If by Yankee you mean American, my friend, that they undoubtedly are,” replies the gentleman responsible for the little responsibilities who are too healthy-looking to be like “Yankee childer”; “but they come from ayont the Mississippi, which may account in some degree for their hardy appearance.”
“What town is that on the other side of the water?”
“Passage, sir.”
Passage! Shade of “Father Prout”! How often have we rolled our tongues in luscious enjoyment around thy roaring lyric in praise of that wonderful borough!
“The town of Passage
Is large and spacious,
And situated