In
professing friendship, and making love, give him but a taste of the
native, and he is a walking honey-comb, that every woman who sees him
wishes to have a lick at; and Heaven knows, that frequently, at all
times, and in all places, does he get himself licked on their account.
Another expression of peculiar force is _vick machree_--or, son of my
heart. This is not only elegant, but affectionate, beyond almost any
other phrase except the foregoing. It is, in a sense, somewhat different
from that in which the philosophical poet has used it, a beautiful
comment upon the sentiment of "the child's the father of the man,"
uttered by the great, we might almost say, the glorious, Wordsworth.
We have seen many a youth, on more occasions than one, standing in
profound affliction over the dead body of his aged father, exclaiming,
"_Ahir, vick machree--vick machree--wuil thu marra wo'um? Wuil thu marra
wo'um?_ Father, son of my heart, son of my heart, art thou dead
from me--art thou dead from me?" An expression, we think, under
any circumstances, not to be surpassed in the intensity of domestic
affection which it expresses; but under those alluded to, we consider
it altogether elevated in exquisite and poetic beauty above the most
powerful symbols of Oriental imagery.
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