First Sentence

""What! no music, no dancing at Castle Hermitage to night; and all the ladies sitting in a formal circle, petrifying into perfect statues," cried Sir Ulick O'Shane, as he entered the drawing-room, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, accompanied by what he called his rear-guard, veterans of the old school of good fellows, who at those times in Ireland, times long since past, deemed it essential to health, happiness, and manly character, to swallow, and shew themselves able to stand after swallowing, a certain number of bottles of claret per day or night."