Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/77

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
PAUL CLIFFORD.
69

clearly proved to the satisfaction of the rich, that the less poor devils eat, the better for their constitutions—despite, we say, of these great acquisitions to British literature, the Asinæum tottered, fell, buried its bookseller, and crushed its author; Mac Grawler only—escaping, like Theodore from the enormous helmet of Otranto—Mac Grawler only survived. "Love," says Sir Philip Sidney, "makes a man see better than a pair of spectacles." Love of life has a very different effect on the optics,—it makes a man wofully dim of inspection, and sometimes causes him to see his own property in another man's purse! This deceptio visus did it impose upon Peter Mac Grawler. He went to Ranelagh. Reader, thou knowest the rest!

Wine and the ingenuity of the robbers having extorted this narrative from Mac Grawler, the barriers of superfluous delicacy were easily done away with.

Our heroes offered to the sage an introduction to their club; the offer was accepted; and Mac Grawler, having been first made drunk, was next made a robber. The gang engaged him in various