The Christmas Books of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh

THE CHRISTMAS BOOKS
of
MR. M. A. TITMARSH
by William Makepeace Thackeray

CONTENTS.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
Mrs. Perkins's Ball
Our Street
Dr. Birch and his Young Friends
The Kickleburys on the Rhine
The Rose and the Ring; or, The History of Prince Giglio and Prince
Bulbo

MRS. PERKINS'S BALL.
THE MULLIGAN (OF BALLYMULLIGAN), AND HOW WE
WENT TO MRS. PERKINS'S BALL.
I do not know where Ballymulligan is, and never knew anybody who
did. Once I asked the Mulligan the question, when that chieftain
assumed a look of dignity so ferocious, and spoke of "Saxon
curiawsitee" in a tone of such evident displeasure, that, as after all it
can matter very little to me whereabouts lies the Celtic principality in

question, I have never pressed the inquiry any farther.
I don't know even the Mulligan's town residence. One night, as he bade
us adieu in Oxford Street,--"I live THERE," says he, pointing down
towards Oxbridge, with the big stick he carries--so his abode is in that
direction at any rate. He has his letters addressed to several of his
friends' houses, and his parcels, &c. are left for him at various taverns
which he frequents. That pair of checked trousers, in which you see
him attired, he did me the favor of ordering from my own tailor, who is
quite as anxious as anybody to know the address of the wearer. In like
manner my hatter asked me, "Oo was the Hirish gent as 'ad ordered
four 'ats and a sable boar to be sent to my lodgings?" As I did not know
(however I might guess) the articles have never been sent, and the
Mulligan has withdrawn his custom from the "infernal
four-and-nine-penny scoundthrel," as he calls him. The hatter has not
shut up shop in consequence.
I became acquainted with the Mulligan through a distinguished
countryman of his, who, strange to say, did not know the chieftain
himself. But dining with my friend Fred Clancy, of the Irish bar, at
Greenwich, the Mulligan came up, "inthrojuiced" himself to Clancy as
he said, claimed relationship with him on the side of Brian Boroo, and
drawing his chair to our table, quickly became intimate with us. He
took a great liking to me, was good enough to find out my address and
pay me a visit: since which period often and often on coming to
breakfast in the morning I have found him in my sitting-room on the
sofa engaged with the rolls and morning papers: and many a time, on
returning home at night for an evening's quiet reading, I have
discovered this honest fellow in the arm-chair before the fire,
perfuming the apartment with my cigars and trying the quality of such
liquors as might be found on the sideboard. The way in which he pokes
fun at Betsy, the maid of the lodgings, is prodigious. She begins to
laugh whenever he comes; if he calls her a duck, a divvle, a darlin', it is
all one. He is just as much a master of the premises as the individual
who rents them at fifteen shillings a week; and as for handkerchiefs,
shirt-collars, and the like articles of fugitive haberdashery, the loss
since I have known him is unaccountable. I suspect he is like the cat in

some houses: for, suppose the whiskey, the cigars, the sugar, the
tea-caddy, the pickles, and other groceries disappear, all is laid upon
that edax-rerum of a Mulligan.
The greatest offence that can be offered to him is to call him MR.
Mulligan. "Would you deprive me, sir," says he, "of the title which was
bawrun be me princelee ancestors in a hundred thousand battles? In our
own green valleys and fawrests, in the American savannahs, in the
sierras of Speen and the flats of Flandthers, the Saxon has quailed
before me war-cry of MULLIGAN ABOO! MR. Mulligan! I'll pitch
anybody out of the window who calls me MR. Mulligan." He said this,
and uttered the slogan of the Mulligans with a shriek so terrific, that my
uncle (the Rev. W. Gruels, of the Independent Congregation, Bungay),
who had happened to address him in the above obnoxious manner,
while sitting at my apartments drinking tea after the May meetings,
instantly quitted the room, and has never taken the least notice of me
since, except to state to the rest of the family that I am doomed
irrevocably to perdition.
Well, one day last season, I had received from my kind and most
estimable friend, MRS. PERKINS OF POCKLINGTON SQUARE (to
whose amiable family I have had the honor of giving lessons in
drawing, French, and the German flute), an invitation couched in the
usual terms, on satin gilt-edged note-paper, to her evening-party; or, as
I call it, "Ball."
Besides the engraved note sent