“ From words they naturally enough came to a thwacking contest, wherein Darby was, as usual in such cases, completely victorious. After thrashing his opponent to his heart’s content, he walked quietly to his inn, saddled his horse, and in his high flow of spirits and internal triumph for the victory, never thought of the cause of the quarrel, until he reached his own pillow at Carrick.
About a week after this, the Cashel-man's door was rudely assaulted about twilight, and on reconnoitring through the window, he discovered the outline of an unknown leg at the door. ”

“ At about midnight, the time when the club was usually most cheerful, a silence prevailed in the room, the door gently opened, and the form, in white, of the dying man, walked into the room, and took a seat in the accustomed chair. There it remained in silence, and in silence was gazed at. His appearance continued a sufficient time in the chair to convince all present of the reality of the vision. But they were in a state of awful astonishment. At length the apparition arose and stalked towards the door, opened it, as if living—went out, and closed the door afterwards. ”

“ They collected and bestowed decent sepulture on the mangled limbs of their comrades, while the skin of the animal, thirteen feet long, became the prize of the sailor who had fired the successful shot.
The history of the whale-fishery records a number of remarkable escapes from the bear. A Dutch captain, Jonge Kees, in 1668, undertook, with two canoes, to attack one, and with a lance gave him so dreadful a wound in the belly, that his immediate death seemed inevitable. Anxious, therefore, not to injure the skin, Kees merely followed the animal close, till he should drop down dead. ”

“ In 1788, Captain Cook, of the Archangel, when near the coast of Spitzbergen, found himself suddenly between the paws of a bear. He instantly called upon the surgeon who accompanied him to fire, which the latter did with such admirable promptitude and precision, that he shot the beast through the head, and delivered the captain. Mr Hawkins, of the Everthrope, in July 1818, having pursued and twice struck a large bear, had raised his lance for a third blow, when the animal sprang forward, seized him by the thigh, and threw him over its head into the water. ”

“ There can be no such rights as those our ancestors fought for, bled for, and died for, if the people cannot talk about the subject of them, write about them, and in short, exercise the Liberty of the Press respecting them. ”

“ The same writer mentions the ingenious contrivance of a sailor, who, being, pursued by one of these creatures, threw down successively his hat, jacket, handkerchief, and every other article in his possession, when the brute pausing at each, gave the sailor always a certain advantage, and enabled him finally to regain the vessel.
Though the ferocity of the bear is such, that he has been known to feed on his own species, yet maternal tenderness is as conspicuous in the female, as in the other inhabitants of the frozen regions. ”

“ There is no exertion which she will not make for the supply of her progeny. A she-bear, with her two cubs, being pursued by some sailors across a field of ice, and finding that, neither by example, nor by a peculiar voice and action, she could urge them to the requisite speed, applied her paws, and pitched them alternately forward. ”

“ When the law gives rights, it gives also the means of exercising them. Nay, it gives more; it gives moreover, the presumption of innocence in the exercise. It is not to be presumed that any man has a criminal intent in availing himself of a constitutional privilege. ”

“ But it was not ordained that the matter should rest here. On one of those "dark gloomy days in November," when men instinctively pore over the bad sides of their accounts, Darby's eye fell upon the aforesaid word Robbery in his bulky, by-gone ledger. ”

“ A Great Wall.—The substance of the great wall of China, which extends along a space of 1500 miles from the shore of the Yellow Sea to Western Tartary, has been estimated by Mr Barrow to exceed in quantity that of all the houses in Great Britain, and to be capable of surrounding the whole earth with a wall several feet high. ”

“ Some fifty years ago, an honest townsman of Carrick-on-Suir, a currier by trade, and Darby O'Donnell by name, (mine own well-known and lately deceased grandfather too, by the-bye,) happened to traffic for several scores of hides with a dealer at Cashel. The price was agreed upon, the money laid down, and an arrangement made, that the merchandize should be sent in the course of a few days to the purchaser’s storehouse at Carrick. The sparkling joy of life, fair uisgebetha, was then, of course, brought in ”

“ So it was agreed they should again be set at liberty, and have freedom of access to the place of public worship; but their manners had been so corrupted, that they were with difficulty restored even to their former discipline.
A Definition.—When the notorious Jeffreys was a barrister, a gentleman in the course of his evidence was making use of the law terms lessor and lessee, assignor and assignee: which might have escaped observation, had not his testimony been directly against Jeffrey's client. ”