Mick Houlahan's Love Affair.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4721, 23 February 1884, Page 1

Mick Houlahan's Love Affair.

'It's a curious thing you were never married, Mick," said fair»haired Ted Smith, who, it was well known/had come to the diggings to make enough money to marry a girl in the place where he was born.

"'lt's quare," replied Mick knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "but it'd be quarer shtill if I did get shwitched, con* sidherin' the rovin'life I've led» An' yet I was wßnsht very near«it—l only escaped by the shkin iv my teeth." We felt jubilant, for the signs clearly showed Mick meant to tell a yarn, and he had not told one for a month.

11 Not," continued Mick. •• but that I'd lots in lore affairs, beginniu' when I was five years old—l've always been fond of ' the petticoats, bless 'em—and endin' for the preshint, wid that foxy ' Widdy Shanahan down at the Two Mile, y out ot which ye made so much fun, you. > shkamers. But this time I was really in for it, if a thing hadn't come in the ; way. Ye see things always in the way in the cross way of ours. I was rery soft at the time, juat that's wbin the famales make your heart bate, shkamers and desavers, and make you think they're angels the wings sbproutin,—an' they do shprout more be token, only mostly they tarn into , br'oomhandies or two years old saplings, i She was a purty gurl, at lashte I thought : so, but you must niver be too sure of your } impressions whin you're dead shtruck— an' you ginerally are at twinty. Why , I've been head and showldhers in lore . and thought the colleen the greatest beauty the world saw, and when I got ( over it—mind, you do get over such things, and that's the blessing in it—why I could see she had a shnuff nose, a mouth cut out for shwallowin' the biggest psrtater irer grown, and freckles enough to tan a bull's hide, not to mention hair that would set the.shnow on fire? ' Ah, Mick," said Ted the'sentimentalist thinking of that parting under the wattle trees, while waiting for the coach, when a thousand "forever and evers " were nttered, "you're wrong in your ideas; real love is eternal; it ends only with death, if then*" "■ Maybe, maybe," said Mick with a queer wink," but if that's true of rale lore, then I've only to say it's a mighty scarce article in this counthry, and for that matther in any counthry I've been in. The article we dale in here, is wondberful like any other goods, it can be turned from one to the other for a considheration. But to me sthory. You seen whin I wint to the diggins I had a mate named Tim Brady, me own age, an' as shtrappin' a < fellow us ever you casht eyes on. We vror like brothers, or, rayther more, for brothers are mostly not very shwate on one another, an' we wor. Why, I believe I'd ] die for him. We ate together and shlept | together and bad all things in common, j But things niver continue long in this world. At that time there wasn't a woman widin fifty miles. Now man's a quare an* unnathural crathure widout women. He < isn't a man at all; he's the original basht© he was before woman was created, But somehow wherever there's man a woman '11 get there before many days are over; ; That's why I think there's lots o' women in the moon for don't we know there's a ' man in it." " Well, it wasn't long before a woman kirn to Mick's Gully—called •finer me. The publican sent for his wife, an* she brought two dacint girls wid her to look afther the place. You ought to seethe day they arrived—come over the sbpur. Why every soul turned out, an' such cheerin' there an' aftherwards such dhrinkin'—don't mintion it. If culd Mul* ligan hadn't turned out I believe we'd have cleared his sthock." "However, it wasn't altogether for good thim women kern. There's two thiags in this world that cause the fightin' and divaraion in it, woman and: gold—l suppose because they're the only things worth havin.' Man, however, whin by himself, is a rery dacint animal, but the moment a woman appears there's bound to be a hullaballoo. Before these gurla