Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/160

 creep for it on our belly, like the serpent, eating dust to any amount in the process; but do we ever succeed in plucking such a specimen as, according to our natures, we can joyfully place in our hats for ostentation or hide under our waistcoats for true love? Do you remember Sir Walter Scott's humorous poem called the "Search after Happiness?" Do you remember how that eastern monarch who strove to appropriate the shirt of a contented man visited every nation in turn till he came to Ireland, the native soil indeed of all the shamrock tribe; how his myrmidons incontinently assaulted one of the "bhoys" whose mirthful demeanour raised their highest hopes, and how