First Love.*

I SHALL never forget the first time I ever drank rum-punch after having been smoking cigars. Dates, says De Quincy, may be forgotten-epochs never. That formed an epoch in my

existence;

"And the last trace of feeling with life shall depart,

Ere the smack of that moment shall pass from my heart."

Let me recall it to my memory, with all its attendant circumstances, and while my soul broods over the delicious recollection, forget the present day, with its temporary miseries, and shut out from its views the follies, the frivolities, the wickedness, the baseness, the ingratitude of the world.

It happened, that though, like most men who, in my day, were reared in Trinity College, juxta Dublin, I had been tolerably well initiated into the theory and practice of compotation, I had never much taken to its greatest adjunct, smoking. I do not think that the Trinity men (Dublin) smoke-it certainly, as long as I remember that seminary, of which I cannot think with affection, never was a fashion there. Particular pipemen, and solitary cigarers, no doubt, always existed, but just as you now and then see a pig-tail (I do not allude to tobacco) dangling behind an elderly gentleman, or hear a shoe creak under the foot of a decent man. Smoking, in short, was the exception-non-smoking the rule. But the men of my time drank hard, though, as youths always do, unscientifically. I therefore, as the rest, drank, and did not smoke.

I was about twenty when I left the University, and went down to live with my father in a pretty seaport town. Here I mixed a good deal in boating-parties, and other such excursions with sea-faring men, and from them, after much persuasion on their parts, I learned to smoke. My first preceptors preferred the pipe. I shall not here enter into the controversy which has

* From Blackwood for August, 1826.-M.

so long agitated the world, concerning the superiority of pipe or cigar. I am tired of controversies.

"I am weary of hunting, and fain would lie down."

For the same reason, I pass all mention of the too celebrated, though in reality minor dispute, concerning the length of the pipe, which cost my friend Captain O'Shaughnessy his life. Though he died as became a man of honour and a gentleman, it may be permitted to a friend to avert his eyes from the melancholy cause which deprived the world of a true philosopher and a brave soldier.

I think I must have persevered in the pipe-system for nine months, when an accident (it is needless to encumber my narrative by detailing what it was) threw me in the way of Cornet Roger Silverthorne, of the 13th Light Dragoons, and Silverthorne Hall in the palatinate of Durham. This eminent and estimable young man—

"O flos juvenum,

Spes læta patris,

Non certa tuæ
Data res patriæ!

Non mansuris

Ornate bonis,

Ostentatus,

Raptusque simul,

Solstitialis

Velut herba solet!"

"Flower of our youth, glad hope of thy fond sire,
To whose bright course thy country looked in vain,
Deck'd with proud gifts not destined to remain,
But shown and snatched away-as, 'neath the fire

Of tropic summers, plants bloom bright, and soon expire."

Forgive these tears. I own it is folly-but nature will sometimes have her way in spite of all our philosophy. This eminent and estimable young man was perhaps the most persevering cigar-smoker that ever existed. If peerages were distributing, he should be Count Segar, instead of the gentleman who now holds that honourable title. He generally smoked five dozen a-day. You never saw him without one in his mouth; and as the voluminous smoke curled in picturesque wreathes from under

his manly mustachio, while he luminously descanted on the vari-
ous natures, uses, and proprieties of the several preparations of
tobacco, he was one of the few men of whom you would de-
cidedly say, that he was born ex fumo dare lucem. I never shall
hear the like again: those eloquent lips are mute, and the brain
that dictated the thought, and the tongue that clothed it in ut-
terance, have mouldered into clay. His fate was singular. He
died of indigestion, from having eaten four pounds and a half
of tripe for a wager. Others, however, maintain that he was
choked in the operation. I never could penetrate through the
veil which thus hangs over his mysterious death. I, however,
incline to the latter hypothesis; for my respected and lamented
friend, I am sure, could have digested anything. The question,
after all, is of little moment. He is dead - and I remain !
"Sweet Roger,

I thought I should have deck'd thy bridal bed,
And not have strewed thy tomb!"

After some controversy, perhaps too obstinately persevered in on my part, the Cornet converted me to cigars. I have said already, that I do not wish to unsettle any man's opinions, and therefore will let those who prefer the pipe, prefer it. I smoked pretty strenuously with him, and after he had been ordered away to Flanders, continued the practice. I moistened always, as is the custom of my country-where scarcely any other spirit is ever used—with whiskey. Of that spirit let no one for a moment imagine that I am about to say anything but what is laudatory. If I did so, I were as ungrateful as unwise -but it is not the spirit to smoke with. I say this emphatically, because I know it to be the case. I am little inclined to dogmatize, but when once I have formed an opinion after careful examination, I uphold it with that firmness which a just regard for one's own character and the interest of truth and honour demand.

Shortly after Silverthorne's departure, business took me to Dublin. Fatal, though delicious visit! On what trifles our fate hangs! I had finished my business, and taken my seat on the outside of the coach to return home, when, as we waited outside the post-office in Sackville-street, I heard a sweet voice say

—I hear it yet tingling in my ears, though fifteen

elapsed I heard a sweet voice

years have

Excuse this gust of passion-it shall be the last. I heard a sweet though rather loud voice say, "Put the little portmanteau into the boot, and take care to tie the two bandboxes tight on the top, covering them from the rain. You can put the big trunk where you like, and I'll take the cloth bag and two brown paper parcels into the coach-good bye, Judy. I'll write from Ballinafad, as soon as I see the old buck." I looked down, and my doom was sealed-I was in love

"Dead shepherd, now I found thy saw of might

He never loved, who loved not at first sight!"

That insidious passion had entered my bosom for the first time. Is there any one who has not experienced it? If there be, I may envy his freedom from disturbance, but I pity the callousness of heart, and the distortion of feeling, for which he is indebted to it.

Cecilia-shall I say, my Cecilia-was hasty in her movements, and rejecting the proffered aid of the guard, she stepped unassisted toward the coach. Her foot slipped in the attempt, and she fell on the flagging. I was smoking on the top when I saw this cruel accident, and without a moment's thought, flung from my jaw as fine a Havannah as ever saw the Moro, leaped on the ground and raised her. She was not hurt, but considerably agitated. She thanked me with hasty accents, and looked on me with a glance, which ever still is- -but I have promised to repress my feelings.

The coach was full inside, and besides I had lived pretty close to my last tenpenny in Dublin, so that even if there had been a place vacant, I could not have taken it. She parted us about daybreak, but I was unfortunate in not being able to see her. In fact the agitation of my spirits was such that I had been obliged to drink fourteen glasses of whiskey and water during the night, which had in some measure got in my head, for, as will happen when friends are parting, I had indulged a little after dinner with some few acquaintance with whom I

chopped in Exchequer-street-and the guard seeing me inclined to be topheavy, had laid me down in the well behind the coachman, where I was unluckily snoring when Cecilia left the coach. She asked for me, to thank me for my assistance, but on seeing how the land lay, they told me that she said in her own kind

manner,

Poor devil-he is flustered with drink-let him snooze it off." Sweet girl!

When I awoke and found her gone I was frantic. I had lost every clue to her. We were twenty miles away from the place she parted the coach before I roused, and the coachman informed me that a gentleman with a led horse was waiting for her, with whom she immediately galloped away-he forgot-insensible brute that he was-in what direction. A new agony seized my mind― the gentleman! WAS SHE MARRIED? My brain was wild. I had no way of satisfying myself, for the accursed mail-coach clerk had entered her name in the waybill in such a hand as to puzzle Beelzebub himself, were he the prince of decypherers, and the only letter I could make out was the first, which proved him to be as abominable in his ideas of spelling as in his writing-for her name, as I afterwards knew, was Crimeen, and the ruffian, regardless of all possible principles of orthography, had commenced it with a Q.

When I got home I concealed my unfortunate passion as well as I could, but what can escape the eye of a parent? About nine days had elapsed before my father noticed my loss of appetite and my silence, but at last he could not bear to pass it by. "Boy," said he, taking me affectionately by the hand, "something is ailing you." "Nothing, sir," said I, "indeed." “Ah!” said my father, "do not think to deceive me that way. There's your fifth tumbler lying before you this half hour, and you're scarce quarter through it yet. I've noticed the same this last week, and except on the day Lord Bullaboo dined with us, when it behoved you to make an exertion, you have not finished any one blessed day seven tumblers. Don't think, my boy, that your father is not minding your happiness. You arn't in love, are you?" The goodness of the old gentleman was not to be withstood, and I confessed the fact, and told him all about