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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license

-

-

-Title: An Irish Crazy-Quilt

-

-Author: Arthur M. Forrester

-

-Release Date: May 20, 2020 [EBook #62180]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Sonya Schermann, Chuck Greif and the Online

-Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This

-file was produced from images generously made available

-by The Internet Archive)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-                         AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.

-

-                     SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO

-                            SONG AND STORY.

-

-                                  BY

-                         ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.

-

-                                BOSTON:

-           ALFRED MUDGE & SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.

-                                 1891.

-

-

-                              COPYRIGHT,

-                                 1890,

-                        BY ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.

-

-

-                                TO THE

-

-                         “FELONS” OF IRELAND,

-

-                      THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,

-

-            WHO HAVE BEEN EXILED OR IMPRISONED OR EXECUTED

-

-            BECAUSE THEY LOVED THEIR NATIVE LAND MORE THAN

-                       HOME OR LIBERTY OR LIFE,

-

-                              This Volume

-

-                      IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.

-

-

-

-CONTENTS.

-

-

-SONGS AND BALLADS.

-

-                                                                    PAGE.

-

-The Church of Ballymore                                                7

-

-The Old Boreen                                                         9

-

-The Irish Schoolhouse                                                 11

-

-Pat Murphy’s Cows                                                     13

-

-Father Tom Malone                                                     16

-

-You Can Guess                                                         18

-

-Only!                                                                 19

-

-Songs of Innisfail                                                    20

-

-The Lord of Kenmare                                                   32

-

-An Old Irish Tune                                                     39

-

-Harvey Duff                                                           45

-

-Ivan Petrokoffsky                                                     52

-

-The Emperor’s Ring                                                    54

-

-Black Loris                                                           56

-

-The Red Heart Daisy                                                   67

-

-The Tide is Turning                                                   68

-

-Our Own Again                                                         70

-

-The Tale of a Tail                                                    71

-

-The Seasick Sub-Commissioners                                         75

-

-Clare Constabulary Caione                                             77

-

-Clause Twenty-six                                                     78

-

-Jenkins, M. P.                                                        80

-

-Thady Malone                                                          81

-

-Rory’s Reverie                                                        83

-

-Our Land Shall be Free                                               102

-

-The Felons of Our Land                                               111

-

-An Official Valuation                                                112

-

-A Bewildered Boycotter                                               113

-

-A Complaint of Coercion                                              115

-

-O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)                                           118

-

-The Fenian’s Dream                                                   119

-

-The Speaker’s Complaint                                              126

-

-Erin Machree                                                         128

-

-Balfour’s Wish                                                       135

-

-Our Cause                                                            136

-

-Served Him Right                                                     138

-

-Rapparee Song                                                        140

-

-To the Landlords of Ireland                                          141

-

-Balfour Rejoices                                                     142

-

-The Irish Brigade                                                    149

-

-Faithful to the Last                                                 156

-

-Fenian Battle Song                                                   158

-

-The Grave of the Martyrs                                             159

-

-Death’s Victory                                                      160

-

-The Green Flag at Fredericksburg                                     161

-

-The Flag of Our Land                                                 162

-

-Hurrah for Liberty                                                   163

-

-The Messenger                                                        165

-

-John Bull’s Appeal                                                   175

-

-The Story of a Bomb                                                  177

-

-Avenging, Though Dim                                                 180

-

-Christmas Dirge of London

-Police                                                               180

-

-Ireland’s Prayer                                                     182

-

-John Bull’s New Year                                                 183

-

-Ready and Steady                                                     185

-

-The Charge of the Guards                                             193

-

-An Address to Slaves                                                 195

-

-The Lion’s Lamentation                                               200

-

-Memorial Ode to Irish Dead                                           202

-

-Song of King Alcohol                                                 209

-

-Contrary Cognomens                                                   210

-

-An Æsthetic Wooing                                                   211

-

-The Drunkard’s Dream                                                 212

-

-Constable X                                                          222

-

-Lucifer’s Laboratory                                                 223

-

-The Monopolist’s Moan                                                224

-

-With the Grand Army Veterans                                         225

-

-The Irish Soldier at Grant’s

-Grave                                                                228

-

-Maine and Mayo                                                       229

-

-The Priest with the Brogue                                           238

-

-Arab War Song                                                        240

-

-The Linguist of the Liffey                                           247

-

-Peggy O’Shea                                                         250

-

-The Boston Carrier’s Plaint                                          253

-

-New England’s Marksmen                                               260

-

-Calcraft and Price                                                   270

-

-Entitled to a Raise                                                  272

-

-The Postman’s Wooing                                                 273

-

-Sonnets to a Shoemaker                                               275

-

-At the College Sports                                                278

-

-Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale                                          286

-

-

-STORIES AND SKETCHES.

-

-Taming a Tiger                                                        22

-

-Ryan’s Revenge                                                        34

-

-Harvey Duff                                                           40

-

-A Seditious Slide                                                     47

-

-Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?                                                58

-

-A Double Surprise                                                     86

-

-Philipson’s Party                                                    103

-

-That Traitor Timmins                                                 129

-

-A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner                                          144

-

-Snooks                                                               151

-

-Caledonian Candlesticks                                              152

-

-A Typical Trial                                                      168

-

-Why Smithers Resigned                                                186

-

-Exploits of an Irish Reporter                                        197

-

-A Political Lesson Spoiled                                           199

-

-An Orange Oration                                                    205

-

-Frederick’s Folly                                                    215

-

-A Sandy Row Skirmish                                                 232

-

-Hobbies in Our Block                                                 241

-

-Not a John L. Sullivan                                               244

-

-A Windy Day at Cabra                                                 248

-

-Apropos of the Census                                                256

-

-A Mixed Antiquarian                                                  261

-

-Jones’s Umbrella                                                     263

-

-Lessons in the French Drama                                          265

-

-A Commercial Crisis                                                  276

-

-A Musical Revenge                                                    280

-

-A Liar Laid Out                                                      282

-

-

-

-

-AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.

-

-

-

-

-THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.

-

-

-    I have knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,

-      Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,

-    Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,

-      And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;

-    Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,

-      Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore--

-    They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul

-      Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.

-

-    Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,

-      Though the roof above its worshippers was low,

-    And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,

-      While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!

-    Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s--by the feet of monarchs trod--

-      With their monumental genius and their lore,

-    Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God

-      Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!

-

-    Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue

-      In accents that we might not understand,

-    But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue

-      As to think his words not heaven’s own command!

-    He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,

-      And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door--

-    In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side--

-      God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.

-

-    There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see

-      Each little modest slab and grassy mound;

-    For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,

-      And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!

-    The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,

-      Desolation was about me, sad and sore,

-    So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,

-      But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!

-

-    I am proud of our cathedrals--they are emblems of our love

-      To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;

-    And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,

-      The devil should not have them as his own!

-    Their splendor has inspired me--but amidst it all I prayed

-      God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,

-    Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade

-      Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!

-

-

-

-

-THE OLD BOREEN.

-

-

-    Embroidered with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,

-      Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,

-    The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,

-      The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;

-    The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,

-      The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.

-    Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,

-      For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!

-

-    It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,

-      Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;

-    It laughed with my joy--in my moments of sadness

-      What solace I found in its pitying shade.

-    When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,

-      My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,

-    What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,

-      So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?

-

-    But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,

-      Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,

-    Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,

-      The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;

-    Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,

-      Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;

-    The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,

-      Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.

-

-    A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,

-      The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,

-    As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,

-      I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;

-    And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor

-      The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,

-    Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,

-      My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.

-

-    Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel

-      With sickness and want I have earned only scars;

-    Life’s twilight is nearing--its day disappearing--

-      My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;

-    But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,

-      Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene

-    Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,

-      The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!

-

-

-

-

-AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.

-

-

-    Upon the rugged ladder rungs--whose pinnacle is Fame--

-    How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;

-    The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,

-    And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.

-    To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise

-    Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;

-    Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,

-    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.

-

-    When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen

-    Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,

-    We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,

-    But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;

-    Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store

-    Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.

-    No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill

-    In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.

-

-    Perhaps--and yet ’tis hard to think--our boastful modern school

-    Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;

-    Would scorn his simple ways--and in the rapid march of mind

-    His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.

-    No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;

-    He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;

-    To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill

-    Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.

-

-    He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs--

-    Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:

-    We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung

-    Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.

-    In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well

-    That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,

-    And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still

-    All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.

-

-    The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;

-    Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;

-    The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;

-    The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.

-    But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,

-    When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,

-    He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,

-    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.

-

-

-

-

-PAT MURPHY’S COWS.

-

-     [In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary

-     Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to

-     the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited

-     roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat

-     Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less

-     than eleven children.]

-

-

-    In a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,

-    There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;

-    From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,

-    With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.

-    He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,

-    And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;

-    While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse

-    Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole--a pair of Kerry cows.

-

-    Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose

-    The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,

-    Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,

-    And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.

-    And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,

-    For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;

-    In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;

-    He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.

-

-    And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,

-    Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;

-    His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair--

-    The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,

-    Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,

-    Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;

-    And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows

-    Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.

-

-    Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,

-    How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!

-    A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,

-    And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.

-    What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,

-    As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,

-    He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,

-    For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.

-

-    Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan--

-    He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;

-    He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,

-    And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.

-    Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,

-    And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:

-    They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,

-    But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.

-

-

-

-

-FATHER TOM MALONE.

-

-A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.

-

-

-    Hair white as innocence, that crowned

-    A gentle face which never frowned;

-    Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;

-    Lips framed to counsel and to bless;

-    Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,

-    A reflex of our native skies,

-    Through which now tears, now sunshine shone--

-    There you have Father Tom Malone.

-

-    He bade the infant at its birth

-    _Cead mille failthe_ to the earth;

-    With friendly hand he guided youth

-    Along the thorny track of truth;

-    The dying felt, yet knew not why,

-    Nearer to Heaven when he was by--

-    For, sure, the angels at God’s throne

-    Were friends of Father Tom Malone.

-

-    For us, poor simple sons of toil

-    Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,

-    Our one ambition, sole content,

-    Not to be backward with the rent;

-    Our one absorbing, constant fear,

-    The agent’s visits twice a year;

-    We had, our hardships to atone,

-    The love of Father Tom Malone.

-

-    One season failed. The dull earth slept.

-    Despite of ceaseless vigil kept

-    For sign of crop, day after day,

-    To coax it from the sullen clay,

-    Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;

-    The tubers rotted--then, oh, shame!

-    We--’twas the last time ever known--

-    Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.

-

-    We had, from fruitful years before,

-    Garnered with care a frugal store;

-    ’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone

-    What were our babes to live upon?

-    We had no seed for coming spring,

-    Nor faintest hope to which to cling;

-    We would have starved without a moan,

-    When out spoke Father Tom Malone.

-

-    His voice, so flute-like in the past,

-    Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,

-    His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,

-    Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!

-    “God’s wondrous love doth not intend

-    Hundreds to starve that one may spend;

-    Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”

-    _That_ from mild Father Tom Malone.

-

-    And when the landlord with a force

-    Of English soldiers, foot and horse,

-    Came down and direst vengeance swore,

-    Who met him at the cabin door?

-    Who reasoned first and then defied

-    The thief in all his power and pride?

-    Who won the poor man’s fight alone?

-    Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.

-

-    So, when you point to heroes’ scars,

-    And boast their prowess in the wars,

-    Give one small meed of praise, at least,

-    To this poor modest Irish priest.

-    No laurel wreath was twined for him,

-    But pulses throb and eyelids dim

-    When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,

-    God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”

-

-

-

-

-YOU CAN GUESS.

-

-

-    There are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,

-    And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,

-    And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find

-    Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;

-    But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,

-    Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,

-    There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess

-    I first met my fate,--what it was you can guess.

-

-    It was under the shade of its bordering trees,

-    One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees

-    At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,

-    And yet it was but a short question to ask.

-    ’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless

-    The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”

-    And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;

-    And the question was this--but I’m sure you can guess.

-

-

-

-

-ONLY!

-

-

-    Only a cabin, thatched and gray,

-      Only a rose-twined door,

-    Only a barefooted child at play

-      On only an earthern floor.

-    Only a little brain--not wise

-      For even a head so small,

-    And that is the reason he bitterly cries

-      For leaving his home--that’s all.

-

-    Only the thought of her girlhood there,

-      And her happier days as wife,

-    In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,

-      Have endeared them to her for life;

-    What is the weeping woman’s cause?

-      Why are her accents gall?

-    What does she know of our intricate laws?

-      It was only a hut--that’s all.

-

-    He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,

-      That man with the eyelids dim,

-    And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth

-      For sinewy serfs like him.

-    Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,

-      For his heart such a wondrous thrall?

-    Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?

-      He was born in the place--that’s all.

-

-           *       *       *       *       *

-

-    The years have gone, and the worn-out pair

-      Sleep under the stranger’s clay,

-    And the weeping child with the curly hair

-      Is a brave, strong man to-day;

-    Yet still he thinks of the olden land,

-      And prays for her tyrant’s fall,

-    And longs to be one of some chosen band,

-      With only a chance--that’s all.

-

-

-

-

-SONGS OF INNISFAIL.

-

-

-    Where the Austral river rushes

-    Through feathery heath and bushes,

-    Through its gurgles and its gushes

-        You may hear,

-    To your wonder and surprise,

-    Sweet melodies arise

-    You have heard ’neath other skies

-        Low and clear.

-    Yes! within the gold land,

-    Strange to you and cold land,

-    Voices from the old land

-        Swell upon the gale--

-    Lyrics of the story,

-    Lit with flames of glory,

-    Dimmed with pages gory,

-        Songs of Innisfail!

-

-    Where Mississippi leaping

-    O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping

-    Through valleys fair, is sweeping

-        To the sea,

-    From the fields of nodding grain

-    On some mountain path or plain

-    Rings a stirring old refrain

-        Fresh and free.

-    Yes! where’er we wander

-    Irish hearts will ponder

-    O’er our land, and fonder

-        Throb with ev’ry tale

-    Of the home that bore us,

-    Till the new skies o’er us

-    Echo with our chorus

-        Songs of Innisfail.

-

-    Exiles o’er the spray-foam,

-    Whereso’er we may roam,

-    Thoughts of far-away home

-        Linger still,

-    And in dreams we see again

-    Babbling stream and silent glen,

-    Forest green and lonely fen,

-        Vale and hill.

-    Yes! our hearts’ devotion

-    Flies across the ocean,

-    While with deep emotion

-        Sternest features pale,

-    As around us stealing,

-    Softened by sad feeling,

-    Through the air are pealing

-        Songs of Innisfail!

-

-

-

-

-TAMING A TIGER.

-

-

-We were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,

-Dublin,--five of us--a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.

-

-There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the

-representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay

-amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,

-who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & Brassey; Tim

-Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing

-stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a

-distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical

-jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome

-kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 A.M. train

-south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance

-of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was

-attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid

-individual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally

-irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.

-

-“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the

-newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way

-from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks

-we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would

-ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a

-little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him

-out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of

-the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take

-whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me

-see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick

-Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this

-Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and

-Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each

-of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,

-and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,

-will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he

-must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my

-sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What

-do you say, boys?”

-

-Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand

-in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the

-major into a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed

-rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the

-compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in

-Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping

-Harry,--delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble

-servant).

-

-At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all

-manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished

-off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to

-the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,

-swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had

-pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout

-to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe

-Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,

-and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.

-

-He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!

-the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now

-the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.

-

-He had killed a panther with his naked hands--with one naked hand, in

-fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in

-desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its

-tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s

-spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and

-he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior

-recesses. He tore its heart out, sir,--its heart,--and an assortment of

-lungs and ribs and other things.

-

-He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello

-crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his

-waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He

-never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.

-

-At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,

-and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we

-managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in

-Ireland.

-

-“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that--down

-in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a

-fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled

-twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized

-atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing

-dumb, my name’s not Boomerang--Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”

-

-“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the

-peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,

-for instance.”

-

-“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach

-of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,--flay him alive,

-sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember

-Joe Boomerang--fighting Joe--as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild

-elephants! I would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,

-the--the--by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”

-

-Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,

-and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am

-the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your

-abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally

-concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I

-suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will

-oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an

-officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you

-have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”

-

-We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform

-and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like

-an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but

-his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I

-cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D---- me, if I will!”

-

-“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not

-a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with

-perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for

-you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with

-pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him

-in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the

-bullet? People said, you know, that it was the doctors and not Davitt

-that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.

-

-The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man

-in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man

-already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not

-going to be killed--I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not

-going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as

-if they were snipe.”

-

-“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of

-the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith

-did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting

-Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively

-blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for

-the honor of the service.”

-

-“The service be d----d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a

-kaleidoscope of colors--red, purple, blue, yellow, and white--were

-flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like

-this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a

-different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his

-courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead

-of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had

-ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,

-sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them

-that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance

-from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and

-winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar

-and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;

-and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb

-from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”

-

-Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,

-and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a

-cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.

-I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I

-shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that

-I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you

-must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you

-to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The

-prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had

-disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.

-Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone

-got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed

-to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”

-

-“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,

-he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he

-has always chosen that so far.”

-

-“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such

-horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing

-outright.

-

-“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”

-

-“Has he--has he--I’m not afraid, you know--ha! ha! Joe Boomerang

-afraid--capital joke--but--but--has he killed anybody?”

-

-“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him

-personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,

-matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The

-major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I

-continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both

-pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.

-You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It

-will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,

-but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere

-with my duty.”

-

-“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that--that--”

-

-“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the

-best. I know an undertaker in Cork--a decent sort of a chap. We can

-arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the

-first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills

-you.”

-

-“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me

-sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what

-alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I

-remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major

-managed to get hold of enough of his voice to inquire how it came to

-pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as

-duelling.

-

-“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western

-institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in

-deference to Yankee ideas.”

-

-“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we

-would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang

-of--”

-

-“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the

-car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife

-clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish

-determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter

-collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.

-“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot

-that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and

-glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of

-America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to

-the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m

-bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the

-Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I

-squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the

-blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,

-sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a

-Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the snub-nosed,

-curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.

-Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena

-from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge

-forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that

-seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made

-a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,

-but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.

-

-When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told

-him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,

-having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed

-staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered

-that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for

-his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at

-the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to

-Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.

-

-“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that

-gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to

-Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him

-this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he

-booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’

-thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since

-the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at

-the ould cross roads.” A few days after I read this announcement in the

-Dublin _Gazette_: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the

-humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident

-magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly

-return to Bengal.”

-

-

-

-

-THE LORD OF KENMARE.

-

-

-    There are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;

-      The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,

-    When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,

-      Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.

-    What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,

-      What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,

-    On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,

-      That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!

-

-    Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning

-      The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,

-    While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,

-      Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,

-    Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow

-      Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;

-    Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,

-      But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!

-

-    When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;

-      When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,

-    For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county

-      Were--the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.

-    And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,

-      Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,

-    The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,

-      Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.

-

-    Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster--

-      This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,

-    Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master--

-      A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!

-    He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;

-      He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer

-    That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges

-      Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!

-

-    He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,

-      Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,

-    But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil

-      Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.

-    Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,

-      The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,

-    And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”

-      Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.

-

-    Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;

-      Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;

-    The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally

-      Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.

-    Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,

-      Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,

-    Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,

-      The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!

-

-

-

-

-RYAN’S REVENGE.

-

-

-During the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most

-exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement

-articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the

-post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,

-for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect

-“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This

-peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional

-association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was

-popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been

-introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain

-refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,

-Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the

-government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the

-indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions

-that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,

-subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to adopt his invention when they

-had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the

-_status quo_ was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,

-English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his

-reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office

-pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that

-nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.

-

-The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that

-Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical

-visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence

-in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of

-his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted

-county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a

-Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than

-turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof

-that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.

-So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.

-

-For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to

-get muddled,--his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the

-spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented _billet-doux_ from

-that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue

-envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna

-to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an

-envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes

-being found to contain nothing at all.

-

-Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with

-the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy

-for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent

-sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that

-euphonious cognomen.

-

-Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state

-indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw

-a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You

-couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.

-If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or

-individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was

-a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the

-shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy

-for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress

-suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good

-harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were

-thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of

-as a blight among the Murphys.

-

-So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed

-to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,

-it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,

-the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.

-

-But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central

-bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his

-confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy

-in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the

-fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went

-forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many

-letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could

-put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,--the crops, the

-weather, the price of provisions,--anything, in fact, or nothing at all.

-The language was of minor importance,--Irish, however, preferred,--and

-the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the

-cause.

-

-Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.

-

-The first day of the interception of _the_ Murphy’s letters, three bags

-full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.

-

-The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.

-

-The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s

-private sanctum with spare bags.

-

-The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.

-

-The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy

-letters on the stairs.

-

-Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.

-

-But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking

-Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters

-for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.

-

-Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the

-grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to

-the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or

-hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the

-general chaos.

-

-The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service

-Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were

-blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs

-and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated

-protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for

-Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.

-

-Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War

-Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey

-quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the

-intercepted epistles in.

-

-Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,--the order to

-overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would

-have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the

-task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was

-relieved.

-

-Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy

-correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed

-to the treacherous waves.

-

-To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up

-a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir

-William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a

-week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the

-gout.

-

-

-

-

-AN OLD IRISH TUNE.

-

-

-    We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,

-    And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay

-    By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood

-    A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.

-    Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,

-    And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,

-    When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,

-    There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.

-

-    It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,

-    It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,

-    And over the dreams of the slumberers cast

-    The magical spell of a voice from the past;

-    It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain

-    Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;

-    And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,

-    Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.

-

-    Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,

-    Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,

-    Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,

-    For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.

-    Once again in old homes we were children at play,

-    Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.

-    Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,

-    And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.

-

-    A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,

-    To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,

-    And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,

-    Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;

-    A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,

-    But never a ball on its death-mission sped;

-    Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon

-    Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!

-

-    It linked with its strains ere they melted away

-    True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,

-    But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,

-    To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.

-    The air seemed to throb with invisible tears

-    Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,

-    And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,

-    Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.

-

-

-

-

-“HARVEY DUFF.”

-

-

-There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible

-to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the

-different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes

-or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

-“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;

-“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment

-before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”

-will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the

-living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself

-a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles

-of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five

-minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because

-he has been killed in the lump.

-

-But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers

-existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is

-none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced

-upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished

-in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican

-convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a

-trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling

-outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but

-if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain

-tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,

-dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,

-hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take

-a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of

-mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will

-amply repay the journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be

-anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well

-to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest

-you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky

-enough to go to hospital.

-

-Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The

-performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.

-

-How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its

-composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated

-with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the

-authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories

-and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.

-

-I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”

-

-There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server

-and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular

-“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled

-in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place

-as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally

-difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the

-melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has

-been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to

-submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied

-experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”

-for thirty seconds.

-

-I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told

-that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,

-returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor

-jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious

-to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time

-to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the

-back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a

-knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the

-harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in

-the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.

-

-In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed

-little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an

-escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,

-and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the

-aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small

-and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle

-something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before

-the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s

-Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and

-bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,

-without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old

-rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen

-might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their

-mouths and their souls in their boots,--that is, if an Irish policeman

-has either a heart or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard

-both along with their civilian clothes.[A]

-

-A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the

-dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic

-entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him

-in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He

-was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer

-was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were

-attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,

-pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man

-aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the

-atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to

-capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.

-Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst

-penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade

-of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that

-strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”

-and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an

-avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told

-Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the

-passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the

-ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,

-twirling and twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon

-the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the

-atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when

-the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the

-crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering

-at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he

-could recover his breath.

-

-I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its

-obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the

-ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and

-it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines

-to that immaculate body:--

-

-

-“HARVEY DUFF.”

-

-    My load of woes is hard to bear,

-    I’m losing flesh with dark despair,

-    And the top of my head is so awfully bare

-    It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.

-    Would you the cause be after knowing

-    That makes me the baldest peeler going,

-    That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?

-    ’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”

-

-        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”

-        If I’ve not heard you often enough,

-        May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,

-        And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!”

-

-    I was once with a bailiff serving writs,

-    My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,

-    For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,

-    And the mob malafoostered me for him.

-    But the case that circles my brain is thick,

-    It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,

-    And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough

-    Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”

-

-        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”

-        Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,

-        My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff

-        Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”

-

-    When duty has called me miles away,

-    Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,

-    And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex

-    Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.

-    I couldn’t coax dry bread and water

-    From father or son, from mother or daughter,

-    But I always could reckon on more than enough

-    Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”

-

-        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”

-        Of you I get more than _quantum suff_,

-        And would to the Lord I could collar the muff

-        Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”

-

-    I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care

-    To go alone to rebel Clare,

-    And with a reckless spirit dare

-    To take a farm that’s vacant there.

-    I know the peasants bold would scatter

-    My four bones to the wind--no matter;

-    They’d wake me decent--no heart so tough

-    As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”

-

-        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”

-        I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,

-        As I think that my soul will depart in a huff

-        To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”

-

-

-

-

-A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.

-

-

-We learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and

-Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy

-has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have

-been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot

-of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged

-Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly

-thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts

-on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at

-present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:--

-

-There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and

-happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.

-

-I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings

-in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never

-did anything so low or ignoble as to _work_ for their country, and are,

-consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big

-pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the

-refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by

-jingo when we do!”

-

-On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and

-unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the

-heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty

-miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing

-triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the

-Milky Way.

-

-Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of

-an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few

-front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.

-

-I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty

-feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous

-juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving

-that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t

-have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of

-Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to

-either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been

-organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a

-National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through

-my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.

-

-But it is strange how the misfortunes of others reconcile us to our

-own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my

-soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw

-approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair

-Araminta Higgins.

-

-They were mashing.

-

-He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,

-preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his

-suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,

-and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.

-

-“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true

-to thee as--as--as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.

-I am thine--thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”

-

-At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet

-and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward

-a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane

-observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he

-supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish

-blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a

-coarse laugh.

-

-They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign

-spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two

-prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the

-direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were

-energetically discussing the National League campaign in Ulster. They

-neared the precipice--I mean the slide.

-

-“This Parnellite invasion will fail--utterly fail--if we remain firm,”

-said the taller of the two, Col. K--H--. “Unity and perseverance must be

-our watchwords. United we stand--”

-

-He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head

-rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his

-desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the

-soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted

-energies.

-

-The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known

-attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to

-discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.

-looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in

-every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were

-veritable embodiments of _fieri-facias_; his stiff, angular collar had

-the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he

-carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and

-processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping

-briskly to destruction.

-

-Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a

-bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.

-

-They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that

-atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.

-

-Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal

-documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored

-ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got

-home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking

-for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a

-bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was

-filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.

-

-When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was

-continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the

-North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his

-reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done

-the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”

-

-And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was

-brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the

-policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault

-over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly

-round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the

-policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had

-got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had

-been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and

-constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.

-

-But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we

-going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls

-and chasms to be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,

-and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?

-It’s awful!

-

-

-

-

-IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.

-

-

-    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division

-      Of the Army of the Danube, is a private--nothing more;

-    And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision

-      On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.

-    He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,

-      And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;

-    So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding

-      Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.

-    But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,

-      Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;

-    And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,

-      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”

-

-    Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted--

-      His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place--

-    And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,

-      No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.

-    It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,

-      When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,

-    When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,

-      And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.

-    There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village

-      (So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),

-    When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,

-      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”

-

-    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division

-      Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,

-    For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion

-      He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.

-    In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,

-      By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,

-    And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory

-      Of dying for his country to be happy or content.

-    He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,

-      And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,

-    While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,

-      Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”

-

-

-

-

-THE EMPEROR’S RING.

-

-

-    The stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,

-      The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;

-    The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;

-      Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;

-    When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder

-      Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,

-    Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,

-      The sentinel checks his monotonous round.

-    Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber

-      With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,

-    For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,

-      The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.

-

-    Fresh horse and new pistols--some phrases of warning,

-      Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,

-    And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning

-      Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.

-    Out, out through the forests--on, on o’er the meadows,

-      While castle and cabin and hamlet and town

-    Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.

-      With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,

-    The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;

-      To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;

-    And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver

-      The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.

-

-    Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,

-      All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;

-    And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;

-      Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,

-    For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,

-      Nor ocean a sheltering island so far

-    As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,

-      Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.

-    So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker

-      Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.

-    Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor

-      Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.

-

-    We Russians are brave, but we only are human;

-      We cower at a power it is death to offend,

-    Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman

-      From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.

-    The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;

-      Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;

-    The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder

-      Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.

-    Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,

-      These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.

-    And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only

-      A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.

-

-

-

-

-BLACK LORIS.

-

-

-    Spurs jingle and lances shine;

-    A hundred brave horsemen in line;

-      Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,

-    For why should true hearts repine?

-    The pathway is level and balmy the air,

-    Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;

-    The sun has but reached its meridian height,

-    “Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”

-    When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,

-    Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;

-    In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,

-    And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.

-    But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,

-    With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,

-        Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!

-

-    Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!

-    Ten heroes fight back to back,

-      And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust

-    A wolf from the howling pack.

-    How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!

-    Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,

-    They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,

-    Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.

-    The ten are scattered; they seem to be

-    Like derelict spars in an angry sea.

-    But never a Cossack was known to yield

-    While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.

-    Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,

-    The waves are engulphing them one by one!

-        But two remain back to back!

-

-    His comrade sinks down with a groan--

-    Black Loris is fighting alone,

-      His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,

-    And his arms as heavy as stone.

-    “Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,

-    For answer he sabres the chief of the band.

-    But his arm is shivered in twain--he feels

-    The earth swim round him--he gasps, he reels,

-    And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,

-    As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar--

-    Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?

-    No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!

-        Black Loris is not alone!

-

-    No tears for the ninety-nine,

-    The nation’s heart is their shrine;

-      But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise

-    For the one man left of the line!

-    The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,

-    And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,

-    The strength and glory of Russia depart,

-    And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,

-    Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell

-    Of dashing Loris who fought so well,

-    Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,

-    Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.

-    And for years to come, when trotting along

-    Ural and Don, men will sing this song--

-        “The One and the Ninety-Nine!”

-

-

-

-

-WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?

-

-

-I.

-

-Mr. Phineas Phlynn, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish

-estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic

-nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous

-functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and

-less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by

-his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the

-abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to

-his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his

-neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy

-man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was

-only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed

-property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits

-included an addiction to French wines and Irish whiskey, a decided

-inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures

-at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into

-frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger

-percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.

-

-But how was it to be done?

-

-He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry

-had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in

-mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and

-the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land

-League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master

-about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he

-described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his

-gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious

-bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks

-deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But

-the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.

-Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a

-repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have

-their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console

-Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his

-fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t

-enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant

-degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent

-to guess that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal

-forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a

-crisis. There should be an outrage--a sanguinary, blood-curdling

-outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent

-carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least

-eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual

-peril.

-

-

-II.

-

-There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion

-of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself--at least, he shot his

-own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this

-horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact

-that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s

-hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was

-in it or not--really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so

-tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly

-inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such

-objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat

-on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police

-barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and

-the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his

-dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his

-revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence

-of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforementioned, and poured

-into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of

-his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had

-fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his

-head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!

-

-

-III.

-

-The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country

-was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The

-revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.

-The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the

-government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized

-community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages

-of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information

-that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an

-exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively

-kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes--a feat

-unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir

-and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown

-had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For

-nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it

-was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their

-emotions.

-

-All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence

-given to him as the employer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,

-that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to

-get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would

-become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition

-permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his

-outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London

-detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the

-event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,

-Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,

-Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine

-bargains, left London for Leitrim.

-

-In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with

-the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of

-the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same

-neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.

-

-

-IV.

-

-In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he

-could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work

-of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.

-

-About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident

-that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because

-every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been

-arrested, and established their innocence. The foreigner who had failed

-would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents

-loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.

-

-It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced

-that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking

-measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector

-Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest

-both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names

-of Jones and Brennan.

-

-

-V.

-

-Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.

-

-“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at

-you.”

-

-“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong

-reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.

-

-“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”

-

-“Where is he?” queried Phineas.

-

-“Here.”

-

-“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for

-revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,

-when, why, how--”

-

-“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am

-Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been

-commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business. I’ve fished. I

-may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant

-for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and

-whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and

-at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police

-there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve

-trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare--I have him,

-I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”

-

-Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins

-departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the

-unconscious Crawley.

-

-

-VI.

-

-“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant

-for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas

-Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no

-time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant

-Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in

-accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in

-Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.

-

-

-VII.

-

-Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and

-about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of

-Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a

-tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,

-too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.

-If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”

-

-“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head

-Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the

-Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,

-if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I

-whistled for them.”

-

-It was so arranged.

-

-Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,

-describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three

-official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened

-and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep

-consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to

-himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding

-the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand

-and the warrant fluttering in his left.

-

-“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he

-ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at

-him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables

-grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a

-racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip

-off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and

-depositing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a

-shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire

-with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to

-receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by

-Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was

-carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells

-and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers

-charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they

-splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred

-skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the

-hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned

-each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms

-and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their

-Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.

-Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among

-the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the

-entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal

-production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully

-unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian

-crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s

-hat.

-

-

-

-

-THE RED-HEART DAISY.

-

-A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.

-

-

-    The clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;

-        The storm of wrath

-    Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,

-        And in its path

-    Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces

-    In quivering bodies and distorted faces.

-

-    Among the bloody drift of dead and dying

-        That strewed the ground,

-    A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,

-        The searchers found.

-    Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,

-    Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.

-

-    Some essence from the forms interred together

-        Enriched the clay,

-    And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather

-        ’Neath which they lay--

-    Rough hide and dainty skin--deep brain and hollow--

-    Silver and iron--Vulcan and Apollo.

-

-    And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled

-        The mountain’s crest,

-    Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled

-        Among the rest,

-    Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory

-    Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.

-

-           *       *       *       *       *

-

-    Those who would make our land a frame of metal,

-        With jewelled heart,

-    Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal

-        As thing apart

-    From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,

-    Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.

-

-

-

-

-THE TIDE IS TURNING.

-

-

-    So, masters who have ruled so long

-      With cruel rods of iron,

-    Who sought with gyves and fetters strong

-      Our freedom to environ,

-    In plenitude of sullen power

-      Our tearful pleadings spurning:

-    Prepare ye for your fated hour,

-      Beware--the tide is turning!

-          Yes! yes! at last we fling the past

-            With all its woes behind us,

-          And stand to-day in firm array

-            Against the bonds that bind us.

-

-    With brutal grip of tyrant hand

-      Ye choked our aspirations,

-    And made our fertile motherland

-      The Niobe of nations;

-    To feed the vices of your lords,

-      Ye stole the people’s earning,

-    And held the theft with hireling swords--

-      But now the tide is turning!

-          Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway

-            Is tottering to ruin,

-          The Irish race a future face

-            That will not harbor you in!

-

-    Ye kept us chained to ignorance,

-      In fear that education

-    Might teach our brains the wisest chance

-      To liberate the nation.

-    But, spite of all your guile and thrall,

-      Our people still are learning

-    What most will tend your yoke to rend,

-      And so the tide is turning.

-          Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,

-            Each rusty chain is breaking;

-          The portents smile upon our isle,

-            For Ireland is awaking.

-

-    From meadows rich of smooth Kildare

-      To frowning crags of Kerry,

-    From ocean-girdled shores of Clare

-      To busy marts of Derry,

-    In our opprest, north, south, east, west,

-      A newer spirit’s burning--

-    The conquering fire of brave desire,

-      That tells the tide is turning.

-          Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark

-            The light at last is blazing,

-          Till on our brow no serf-brand now

-            Can chill a friendly gazing.

-

-

-

-

-OUR OWN AGAIN.

-

-

-    The voice of freedom’s sounding

-      From farthest shore to shore;

-    And Erin’s pulse is bounding

-      With manhood’s blood once more;

-    Our sluggard trance is broken,

-      We stand erect as men,

-    Our stern demand is spoken,

-      We’ll have our own again!

-

-    No futile bribes can stay us,

-      No traitor chiefs control,

-    No wheedling tones delay us,

-      No terrors blanch our soul.

-    The gloomy hour has vanished

-      And gone forever when

-    We could be crushed or banished--

-      We’ll have our own again!

-

-    The bluster of the Tories,

-      And Whigdom’s tempting lies,

-    Are vain and foolish stories

-      We spurn and we despise.

-    We’ve torn the landlord foeman

-      From out his reeking den,

-    And now we’ll halt for no man--

-      We’ll have our own again!

-

-    Our eyes are lifted sunward,

-      No power can bar our course,

-    Our march must still be onward,

-      Spite either guile or force;

-    And be it by the sabre,

-      The voice, the vote, or pen,

-    Or steadfast, patient labor--

-      We’ll have our own again!

-

-

-

-

-THE TALE OF A TAIL.

-

-

-    There’s a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,

-    Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;

-    Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,

-    For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;

-    ’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July

-    Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;

-    And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,

-    That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.

-

-    Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,

-    Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,

-    And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon

-    Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.

-    And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,

-    He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,

-    Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,

-    Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.

-

-    ’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round

-    Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,

-    And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,

-    In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;

-    And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,

-    The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,

-    But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,

-    For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.

-

-    When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,

-    She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;

-    And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,

-    With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.

-    Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind

-    That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.

-    Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,

-    That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.

-

-    Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,

-    And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,

-    Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then

-    That the time for speech was past--the knife was mightier than the pen.

-    They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,

-    And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,

-    To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,

-    But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.

-

-    When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone

-    Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.

-    The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,

-    As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.

-    Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,

-    But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,

-    That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,

-    And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.

-

-    And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,

-    Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;

-    She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)

-    Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;

-    And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,

-    And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,

-    That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,

-    Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.

-

-    And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,

-    That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;

-    And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her

-    Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.”

-    Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,

-    The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;

-    They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,

-    Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.

-

-

-

-

-THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.

-

-     [In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during

-     the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of

-     the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on

-     the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,

-     in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island

-     was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for

-     over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land

-     Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?

-     Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.

-     The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible

-     to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses

-     record the exploit:]

-

-

-    There were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,

-    With due responsibility on each official breast,

-    To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent

-    To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.

-    Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,

-    It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,

-    Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,

-    For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.

-

-    They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults

-    As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,

-    And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,

-    They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.

-    The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,

-    Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,

-    They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact

-    That their unexpected _dejeuner_ was owing to the Act.

-

-    They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,

-    There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,

-    And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,

-    They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,

-    And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport

-    That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;

-    They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked

-    The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.

-

-    They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay

-    While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,

-    Although alternate intervals were taken to allow

-    Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.

-    That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal

-    A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;

-    And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,

-    They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.

-

-

-

-

-CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.

-

-

-    So, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!

-      An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,

-    Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do

-      Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?

-    All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’

-      An’ existence will become a dreary void;

-    Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;

-      Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!

-

-    No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke

-      Shall we revel in our customary fun

-    Of scaring all the humble women folk

-      In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.

-    There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,

-      An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;

-    We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected

-      To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!

-

-    No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,

-      ’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,

-    An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire--

-      We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,

-    The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,

-      An’ life by common people be enjoyed,

-    In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint

-      That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!

-

-    Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.

-      But we didn’t think you positively cruel

-    Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,

-      And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.

-    Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,

-      Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,

-    We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’

-      Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!

-

-

-

-

-CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.

-

-(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)

-

-

-    I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,

-      For struggling poor sowls like myself,

-    To brighten our dreary existence,

-      An’ even to gather some pelf,

-    In a land where the soil is but waitin’

-      The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks

-    That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’

-      To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.

-

-    It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried

-      Away from the strings of my life--

-    From the spot where my mother lies buried,

-      The place where I coorted my wife.

-    Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,

-      My conscience remorsefully pricks--

-    I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,

-      Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.

-

-    For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,

-      When my luck like a stranger goes by,

-    When blight settles down on the praties,

-      An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;

-    Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,

-      An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,

-    I curse you, misfortune so cruel,

-      An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.

-

-    Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,

-      Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;

-    Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,

-      An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,

-    Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,

-      An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks--

-    Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’

-      That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.

-

-    And often at night I’ve a notion,

-      Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,

-    In that plintiful land o’er the ocean

-      They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;

-    They might even an odd pat of butther

-      Along with their stirabout mix;

-    Oh, my heart is too full for to utter

-      Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.

-

-    To see the health-roses assimble

-      On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls

-    Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble

-      With the innocent laugh of my girls;

-    An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,

-      Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.

-    Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy

-      Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.

-

-

-

-

-JENKINS, M. P.

-

-

-    Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er

-    To address the electors he’d soothered before,

-    But he found in their feelings toward him a change,

-    Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;

-    He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south

-    When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,

-    And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,

-    For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.

-

-    Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;

-    Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”

-    A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;

-    “I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.”

-    They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,

-    “The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”

-    He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,

-    “For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.

-

-    But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;

-    He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,

-    And as it was freezing it needn’t be told

-    That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.

-    And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind--

-    Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,

-    And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,

-    “I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.

-

-    He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,

-    Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.

-    “Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,

-    “Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”

-    All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;

-    “I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.

-    ’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;

-    I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.

-

-

-

-

-THADY MALONE.

-

-

-    Hurrah for our tight little, bright little nation,

-      The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;

-    The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,

-      Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.

-              Were once we united

-              Our wrongs should be righted

-    And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,

-              But still some intraygur,

-              Or bastely renayger,

-    Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.

-              Yet, no matter, we’ve planned

-              A divarsion so grand

-    That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;

-              And the rogue who’ll consent

-              To contribute rack rint

-    Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!

-

-    The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,

-      The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,

-    An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,

-      The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,

-              For his wife wint away

-              On the very next day

-    With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),

-              An’ sisters and cousins

-              Departed in dozens,

-    Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.

-              Why, sorra a doubt,

-              Sure, the fire it wint out

-    An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,

-              Till he felt that the rint

-              Had been badly ill-spint

-    That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!

-

-    The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,

-      The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,

-    In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,

-      An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.

-              The sparrows, diminted,

-              Grew quite discontinted,

-    An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;

-              The pigs tuk to fittin’,

-              An’ hins that were sittin’

-    Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.

-              A polis inspector,

-              A taxes collector,

-    Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,

-              An’ there now he’s stuck,

-              Without hope, grace, or luck,

-    Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!

-

-

-

-[B] RORY’S REVERIE.

-

-

-    Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand

-    To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,

-    To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,

-    To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.

-    ’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,

-    Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;

-    My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,

-    Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!

-

-    How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,

-    Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,

-    Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,

-    Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!

-    An’ they must know--the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,

-    That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.

-    Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight--

-    I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!

-

-    Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,--

-    (“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging

-          hotly round),--

-    And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face

-    Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.

-    She kissed me ere she sank to rest--I’d think it sin just now

-    To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;

-    Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight--

-    I mustn’t think of this--No! no! for Rory walks to-night!

-

-    Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,

-    I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.

-    The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long--

-    Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.

-    And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,

-    When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,

-    An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,

-    An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”

-

-    And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;

-    If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;

-    My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;

-    My child--but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!

-    She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when

-    She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:

-    Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,

-    To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!

-

-    What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer

-    For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;

-    I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,

-    No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!

-    I’m shakin’ like an aspen--Faugh! I can’t afford to spend

-    My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end--

-    What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,

-    I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.

-

-

-

-

-A DOUBLE SURPRISE.

-

-

-I.

-

-GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.

-

-Constable Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the

-Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail

-to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable

-Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was

-tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,

-and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution

-which has deprived the Irish constabulary of all the ordinary feelings

-of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a

-riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a

-recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was

-born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was

-evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in

-dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested

-suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar

-to his code of instructions and mode of training--these were mysteries

-known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The

-physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own

-limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry

-McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the

-metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the

-somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in

-the parish who disputed unpopularity with him--George Macgrabb, J. P.,

-the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of

-its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles

-around.

-

-Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two

-despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral--or

-immoral--characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the

-recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to

-the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,

-that the chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question

-about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,

-which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to

-direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were

-supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save

-Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police

-were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the

-constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.

-Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his

-magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest

-in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he

-had sent to Gallagher a goose.

-

-“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate

-feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to

-rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.

-Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your

-comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”

-

-Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and

-miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,

-or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the

-gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship

-are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried

-to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of

-a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of half-a-dozen

-agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make

-his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But

-the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The

-compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin _Farmer’s Gazette_ recommended

-boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his

-own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged

-Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.

-The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he

-could recover from this outrage to his judgment.

-

-The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the _Barndoor

-Chronicle_ gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert

-Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of

-edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight

-spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.

-He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the

-kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in

-Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and

-culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be

-fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,

-half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official _Gazette_, tunic

-buttons, bayonet sheaths--anything, everything, except flesh-forming

-food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private

-circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,

-search-warrants, copies of information, it swallowed with an avidity

-that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.

-

-I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a

-knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that

-wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be

-necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that

-transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.

-

-

-II.

-

-A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.

-

-The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable

-Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.

-They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,

-and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant

-farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated

-Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,

-madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never

-doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and

-propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British

-justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary

-joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and

-your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who

-is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great

-measure to his powers of mimicry, and the fact that Macgrabb and

-Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At

-weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again

-and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the

-magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the

-greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried

-in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would

-have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s

-charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at

-finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue

-and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous

-countenance.

-

-As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s

-father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the

-parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either

-the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the

-sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not

-account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a

-two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and

-in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb

-could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s

-Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less

-expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,

-guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to

-contribute, but he could and did express his opinion of the

-rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis

-was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of

-the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within

-measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s

-collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had

-begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the

-universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left

-McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his

-difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered

-the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.

-

-I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This

-reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.

-Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,

-frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the

-opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of

-his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in

-his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the

-fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a

-devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he

-couldn’t quite understand it himself.

-

-It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly

-disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical

-susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and

-Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and

-with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a

-knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical

-studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a

-grass plot, and out into the high road.

-

-It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose

-of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the

-peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.

-

-“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand

-familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper

-escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch

-McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”

-

-“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.

-

-“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been

-engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents

-are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and

-you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents--you’re not

-supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t

-nab that rent receipt--you’ll know it--it’s on blue, thick paper--what

-harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police

-authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing

-else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down

-for you, and the chance, Tom--think of that, my boy--the chance of

-having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood

-out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party

-last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you

-think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,

-gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till

-the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with

-delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”

-

-“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers

-and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a

-rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies

-of the _Irish World_, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,

-even if I lose my stripes.”

-

-On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a

-loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the

-summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and

-Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.

-

-“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he

-yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my

-oath--I mane this sarch-warrant--I demand any arms, ammunition,

-traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”

-

-McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to

-his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,

-“Arrah! Sergeant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of

-these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,

-yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have

-such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”

-

-The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his

-followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or

-scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,

-and the merciless jeering of the young student.

-

-On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.

-If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there

-is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”

-

-That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat

-down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the

-search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged

-in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the

-table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring

-in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened

-by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and

-perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was

-the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the

-omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers

-strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,

-but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and

-disappeared from view.

-

-

-III.

-

-A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.

-

-About noon the constable received the following note:--

-

-     _Sir_,--Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your

-     grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for

-     £24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George

-     Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take

-     legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your

-     punishment. Yours, etc., PATRICK MCCARTHY.

-

-The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:--

-

-     MR. MCCARTHY:

-

-     _Sir_,--I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to

-     the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few

-     suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin

-     Castle.

-

-                                               Yours, THOMAS GALLAGHER,

-                                                  _Constable, R. I. C._

-

-

-

-The second note was less short, but more mysterious:--

-

-     MR. MACGRABB:

-

-     _Respected Sir_,--That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying

-     out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.

-     Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has

-     one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its

-     stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it won’t digest a

-     piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill

-     the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful

-

-                                                      THOMAS GALLAGHER.

-

-

-

-The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives

-from Macgrabb:--

-

-                                               THE LODGE, Dec. 7, 1880.

-

-     _My dear Mr. McCarthy_,--I find on looking over the office books

-     that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.

-     His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his

-     father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,

-     and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I

-     would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of

-     course you know the consequences of delay.

-

-     Faithfully yours,

-

-                                                       GEORGE MACGRABB.

-

-     _Dear Constable_,--Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to

-     drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.

-

-                                                                GEORGE.

-

-

-

-

-IV.

-

-THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.

-

-To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his

-note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its

-literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,

-for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more

-for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat

-annoyed, even if it did not alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was

-a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have

-killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost

-receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive

-interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the

-missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated

-blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document

-obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to

-breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the

-barracks of its treasure.

-

-On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the

-fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after

-Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent

-to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment

-against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the

-said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why

-such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious

-tenant.

-

-On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.

-

-“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day

-or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from

-McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was

-stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the

-_Irish World_ found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the

-bench against him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We

-landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G--d, I’ll

-put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll

-be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have

-every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other

-rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them

-down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more

-men.”

-

-“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a

-vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,

-didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains

-of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a

-fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save

-young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?

-He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then

-look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.

-Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind--”

-

-The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating

-and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a

-hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the

-hamper was attached a card:--

-

-“A Christmas Box--From Harry McCarthy.”

-

-“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,

-with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from

-the box a “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher

-and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the

-goose!”

-

-They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,

-as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as

-ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the

-law.

-

-The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time

-before he could read its contents:--

-

-     _My poor Gallagher_,--I do not wish to deprive you of your

-     Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold

-     collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your

-     last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It

-     has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its

-     exploring turn of mind that I admire--though certainly it is the

-     most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I

-     confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been

-     well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect

-     employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its

-     digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,

-     and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier

-     to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I

-     discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most

-     valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it

-     has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of

-     blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and

-     hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been

-     better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept

-     your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of

-     discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the

-     mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a

-     treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,

-     which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare

-     time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of

-     exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing

-     interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original

-     author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity

-     in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his

-     ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a

-     strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal

-     would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and

-     dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps

-     both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,

-

-                                                        Yours, as ever,

-                                                        HARRY MCCARTHY.

-

-     P. S.--I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”

-     which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send

-     you tickets?

-

-They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after

-they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply

-for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the

-whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the

-greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot

-say which was the greater surprise--that which he felt when he

-encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he

-got it back again.

-

-

-

-

-OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.

-

-

-    Brightly our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,

-      Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;

-    Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;

-      Firm is each footstep, erect every head.

-    Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,

-      Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;

-    Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry

-      Wakens the nation--Our land shall be free!

-

-    We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining

-      In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,

-    And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,

-      For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!

-    What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;

-      Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;

-    On to the contest, then, up with the green again!

-      Death to the tyrant--Our land shall be free!

-

-    The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,

-      The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;

-    Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;

-      While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!

-    Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,

-      But now she rises erect from her knee,

-    And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,

-      Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!

-

-    England no longer can mock or deride us;

-      Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;

-    Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;

-      True to the cause we shall ever remain.

-    Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;

-      Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;

-    Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,

-      Soldiers, press onward--Our land shall be free!

-

-

-

-

-PHILIPSON’S PARTY.

-

-

-Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson

-Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived

-in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the

-express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,

-which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out

-of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had

-allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three

-years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle

-manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease--with a

-view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all

-round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to

-view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was

-regarded by Old Soapsuds,--which was the very irreverend title those

-benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the

-city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime

-of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the

-tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table

-had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest

-bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson

-had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it

-would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no

-effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and

-calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict

-Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest

-of the tenants.

-

-At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going

-agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,

-ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of

-landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the

-entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put

-down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was

-smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of

-any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally

-workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked

-fifty--fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to

-beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was

-what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had

-Peter Philipson--“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.

-

-The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained

-the old housekeeper and the cook and the coachman and a stable boy,

-only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas

-Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the

-evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of

-the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first

-proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the

-neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his

-next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as

-a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he

-expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the

-recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.

-These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate

-missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,

-including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under

-penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon

-his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his

-father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle

-to the _Limehouse Chronicle_ on the proper method of settling the Irish

-difficulty.

-

-On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his

-tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay

-up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected

-so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the

-farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men

-who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them

-retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say

-that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be

-a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,

-and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,

-he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got

-round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”

-

-“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest

-without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”

-

-“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an

-ill-disguised sneer.

-

-Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the

-wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the

-twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.

-

-“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”

-

-“Well, we’re here to bring _you_ to _your_ senses; not to show that

-we’ve parted with our own.”

-

-“I--I--” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t

-understand you.”

-

-“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for

-arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to

-raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long

-as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint

-too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man, to offer you a fair rint for

-this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t

-like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to

-the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”

-

-Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was

-nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he

-did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is

-mo--mo--monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in

-every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll

-evict--I’ll-I’ll--by Jove! I’ll--I’ll--Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of

-this!”

-

-“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like

-to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve

-only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,

-begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man

-to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,

-thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.

-Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts

-of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own

-fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t

-neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word

-of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A

-thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the

-deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest

-chair with a dim conviction surging through his brain that there was

-something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,

-Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than

-Ballymurphy, County Cork.

-

-After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things

-were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the

-decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about

-that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so

-how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with

-him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived

-spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was

-interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man

-Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which

-at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.

-

-“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.

-

-“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,

-she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the

-’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the

-front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe

-there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,

-’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’

-mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a

-hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with

-the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve

-come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey--I mean

-to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham--I

-didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as

-much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for

-Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of

-hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful

-Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”

-

-Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed

-sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest

-railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the

-distance he could place before nightfall between himself and

-Ballymurphy.

-

-A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had

-spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires

-were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision

-store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig

-he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his

-equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter

-groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited

-guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.

-Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring

-squires from half a dozen estates--a goodly company of fifteen or

-sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their

-wants, and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple

-of loaves to feast their appetites!

-

-It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the

-burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman

-in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the

-whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial

-in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking

-examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he

-would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?

-Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing

-his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where

-boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and

-housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he

-poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?

-

-He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.

-With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove

-the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to

-his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He

-restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the

-stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The

-party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it

-was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.

-

-If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a

-soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into the counting-house of

-Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his

-candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned

-to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be

-firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on

-the subject.

-

-

-

-

-THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.

-

-

-    Fill up once more, we’ll drink a toast

-      To comrades far away;

-    No nation on the earth can boast

-      Of braver hearts than they.

-    And though they sleep in dungeons deep,

-      Or flee, outlawed and banned,

-    We love them yet, we ne’er forget

-      The felons of our land!

-

-    In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,

-      Foredoomed by alien laws,

-    Some on the scaffold proudly died

-      For holy Ireland’s cause.

-    And brothers, say, shall we to-day

-      Unmoved like cowards stand,

-    While traitors shame and foes defame

-      The felons of our land?

-

-    Some in the convict’s dreary cell

-      Have found a living tomb,

-    And some unseen, unfriended, fell

-      Within its silent gloom.

-    Yet what care we, although it be

-      Trod by a ruffian band,

-    God bless the clay where rest to-day

-      The felons of our land!

-

-    Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,

-      Oh, little do we care,

-    A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown

-      An Irish head can wear!

-    And every Gael in Innisfail

-      Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,

-    From Lee to Boyne would gladly join

-      The felons of our land!

-

-

-

-

-AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.

-

-

-    The wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,

-    In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;

-      And as he contemplated the interminable rain,

-      On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,

-    For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.

-

-    The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,

-    And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,

-      As he thought of bronchial attacks,

-      Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,

-    And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.

-

-    The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,

-    The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil

-      Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,

-      O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,

-    And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.

-

-    His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,

-    And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,

-      His gloomy face relaxed,--indeed, he actually laughed;

-      He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught

-    That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.

-

-    He whispered to the jarvey--“You remember Murphy’s land;

-    Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?

-      That is, could you perambulate

-      Around that gentleman’s estate

-    In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?

-

-    “You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,

-    But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,

-      Return the muddy boots to me

-      Unbrushed, because I wish to be

-    Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.”

-

-    That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,

-    He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,

-      He simply mopped the boots around

-      The dirtiest adjacent ground,

-    And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.

-

-    And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent

-    Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,

-    Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,

-      Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure

-      That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,

-    That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.

-

-

-

-

-A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.

-

-

-    I’m diminted,--this is awful; so it is

-      My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;

-    ’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz

-      The time I lost my churning through the thunder.

-    Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,

-      An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary--

-    Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!--

-      Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.

-

-    I wouldn’t mind the ould man,--not a jot;

-      I always looked upon him as a blaggard,

-    Since his language was so disperately hot,

-     Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.

-    They might pass their resolutions by the score

-      About him, and I would niver prove contrary,

-    But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore

-      Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.

-

-    Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,

-      Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;

-    An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,

-      Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.

-    Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;

-      They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,

-    An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,--

-      Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.

-

-    If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,

-      Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,

-    Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,

-      An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,

-    I would do my best endayvors to obey;

-      But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy

-    Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,--

-      Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!

-

-

-

-

-A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.

-

-

-    O Peggy, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,

-    And help me to recover from my state of discontint;

-    There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,

-    And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.

-            For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,

-            By the light of that same silver moon,

-                  Found out of his bed,

-                  But will straightway be led

-                  To a cushion of plank,

-                  That of feathers is blank,

-            An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.

-

-    Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,

-    With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;

-    Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant

-    Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;

-            An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste

-            For resting his arm round your waist,

-                An’ except for a sigh,

-                Or a glance of your eye,

-                Or an odd little squeeze

-                That there’s nobody sees,

-            His comfort will be of the laste.

-

-    Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,

-    Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?

-    I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,

-    I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;

-            I despised my five miles of a thramp

-            In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,

-                For I knew at its ind

-                I could always dipind

-                That some one I’d find

-                Who had sootherings kind,

-            To rescue my sperits from damp.

-

-    But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,

-    The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;

-    And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,

-    I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.

-            An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,

-            Stritched out on an ould cabin door,

-                With six ounces of lead

-                Settled inside my head,

-                An’ my bosom, that’s true

-                As the saints unto you,

-            Disarranged by an ounce or two more.

-

-    Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,

-    Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;

-    And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,

-    That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;

-            So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,

-            And the law has such far-seeing eyes,

-                ’Twould find thim all out,

-                And there isn’t a doubt

-                Introduced I would be,

-                By some dirty J. P.,

-            To a suit of the Government frieze.

-

-

-

-

-O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.

-

-BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.

-

-

-    Gallant sons of Innisfail,

-    Ye whose stout hearts never quail,

-    Though no glittering coats of mail

-        Their proud throbbings hide:

-    Hark! yon distant sullen hum!

-    ’Tis the rolling of the drum.

-    See! our Saxon foemen come

-        In their wrath and pride.

-

-    Meet them, comrades, face to face,

-    Meet them as becomes our race,

-    Let no shadow of disgrace

-        Dim our spotless name.

-    Front to front, unshrinking, stand,

-    Fire each heart and nerve each hand,

-    Strike for God and fatherland,

-        Liberty and fame!

-

-    Kinsmen, they are still the same

-    As when, centuries past, they came

-    To our shores, and blood and flame

-        Followed in their track;

-    By the still uncancelled debt

-    We were cowards to forget,

-    By the wrongs we suffer yet,

-        Drive them headlong back!

-

-    As when angry billows leap,

-    Like proud chargers from the deep,

-    Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep

-        All their wrath to spray,

-    So their glinting waves of steel

-    Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel

-    Till their serried columns reel,

-        Scattered in dismay.

-

-    Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be

-    Still unconquered, proud, and free;

-    Strike, and fear not,--victory

-        Waits on every blow;

-    Strike, that we may never roam

-    Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;

-    Strike together, and strike home,

-        Vengeance on the foe!

-

-

-

-

-THE FENIAN’S DREAM.

-

-CHRISTMAS, 1867.

-

-

-    Through London’s dull and murky air

-      The merry Christmas bells

-    Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,

-      Their sonorous throbs and swells.

-    To the half-slumbering town they spoke

-      Of peace and God’s good-will,

-    And seemed to chase with pealing stroke

-      The fiends of hate and ill;

-    But, ah, how cruelly they broke

-      Around dark Pentonville!

-

-    There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,

-      Half timid, forced their way,

-    And fell in slender, silvery streams,

-      Down where the convict lay.

-    They glanced a moment round the place,

-      Cold, comfortless, and bare,

-    Then, in a pitying embrace,

-      Like angel spirits there,

-    Caressed the careworn, pallid face,

-      So wan, and yet so fair.

-

-    They seemed to whisper softly while

-      Around his head they strayed,

-    For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,

-      Half joy, half anguish, played;

-    As if the tender moonbeams sought

-      Bright tales of hope to tell,

-    And the day memories, bitter, wrought

-      Such fancies to dispel;

-    And so his two dream guardians fought

-      Within his lonely cell.

-

-    His dream was of the loved old land

-      He never could forget--

-    The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,

-      Had not subdued it yet;

-    The land of legend and of lay,

-      Of mountain, stream, and lake,

-    Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,

-      Of forest, glen, and brake,

-    Where highland sprite and lowland fay

-      A home forever make.

-

-    The land whose children toil and bleed,

-      And drudge and starve in vain,

-    For where the peasant sows the seed,

-      A stranger reaps the grain.

-    The Isle of Saints--where knaves and spies

-      Flourish and thrive apace;

-    Where fortune must be wooed by lies,

-      Dishonor, and disgrace;

-    The true man from such saintdom flies,

-      And cattle take his place.

-

-    Land of the green, and of the gray!

-      For workhouse, tomb, and jail

-    Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,

-      And answer, Innisfail,

-    Tell us which tint thou seest most,

-      The old one or the new?

-    The green of which our poets boast,

-      Or the more sombre hue?

-    Few wear the green: a countless host

-      Have donned the gray for you.

-

-    Island of verdure, glorious land!

-      So rich in fertile plains,

-    Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,

-      Yet famine ever reigns;

-    Where through the mellow ripening corn

-      The balmiest zephyrs sigh,

-    Where brighter seems each glowing morn,

-      More radiant each sky;

-    Where ’tis misfortune to be born,

-      And happiness to die.

-

-    Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled

-      To think he played once more,

-    A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,

-      Beside the cabin door--

-    The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,

-      Upon his mother’s knee,

-    He first had learned to lisp a prayer

-      For Ireland’s liberty,

-    And ever pregnant seemed the air

-      With joyous melody.

-

-    His fancy changed: the youthful face

-      In sternness now was set,

-    His woes had left no coward trace

-      Upon his spirit yet;

-    His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,

-      His cheeks were all aglow;

-    Expanded seemed the hollow chest,

-      His brows contract, as though

-    Disturbed and broken was his rest

-      By some nocturnal foe.

-

-    He dreamt that in his native land,

-      Away from this bleak jail,

-    He stood within a meadow grand,

-      A shamrock-spangled vale.

-    Above the scene the sun-rays bright

-      In glittering grandeur beamed,

-    Around him in their golden light

-      Ten thousand bayonets beamed,

-    And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!

-      Green Erin’s banner streamed.

-

-    From town and village, hill and glen,

-      With clamorous fife and drum,

-    From mountain brake and lowland fen

-      The mustering legions come;

-    The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,

-      Has brought his dinted blade;

-    While quickly from the neighboring town

-      Flock in the sons of trade;

-    The farmer flings his good spade down,

-      And joins the dense brigade.

-

-    The fiery Northmen, in whose veins

-      Still flows the blood of those

-    Who on a hundred battle-plains

-      Have conquered Erin’s foes--

-    The brave descendants of O’Neill,

-      A stern and fearless band,

-    A living wall of sparkling steel

-      Beneath the old flag stand,

-    And many a Saxon foe shall feel

-      Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.

-

-    With Ulster’s columns, side by side,

-      Are Munster’s squadrons massed,

-    Like tigers into line they glide,

-      So noiselessly and fast;

-    Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green

-      They bear into the fray,

-    Through England’s host their sabres keen

-      Shall carve a corse-strewn way,

-    And Limerick and Skibbereen

-      Be well avenged to-day.

-

-    Proud Leinster, all your chivalry

-      To arms electric spring;

-    High ’mid the battle’s revelry

-      Your stirring shout shall ring;

-    And many a foe this day shall rue

-      Your fierce, impetuous might;

-    The scenes that gallant Wexford knew

-      Shall be reversed ere night;

-    The epitaph to Emmet due

-      Your gleaming swords shall write.

-

-    O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives

-      Within your ranks this hour;

-    Before the strength your hatred gives

-      Well may the despot cower.

-    Think of your long, black night of tears,

-      And say, can you forget

-    The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers--

-      That huge, uncancelled debt,

-    The wrongs of thrice two hundred years

-      That scourge your province yet?

-

-    Hark to that distant rumbling sound!

-      See, yonder come the foe;

-    Now be our arms with victory crowned,

-      The foreign scum laid low.

-    The stillness and the calm are o’er,

-      And many a sulphurous cloud,

-    Betinged with flame and dripping gore,

-      Shall form a battle-shroud

-    For those whose tongues may swell no more

-      The nation’s slogan loud.

-

-    Like hostile torrents armies clash,

-      And steel now crosses steel,

-    The lurid flames incessant flash,

-      And volleyed thunders peal;

-    But backward reel the alien ranks,

-      With one exultant cry,

-    Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,

-      Not vainly will ye die;

-    Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,

-      The craven red-coats fly!

-

-    ’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;

-      And though yon darling flag

-    May float above our castle towers

-      A torn and tattered rag,

-    ’Tis still our own; and every fold

-      Preserved us from the strife,

-    Each shred around that flag-staff rolled

-      Unpierced by ball or knife,

-    Is worth a mine of virgin gold--

-      Aye, worth a hero’s life.

-

-    From slimy cell and dungeon damp

-      Bring forth our prisoned men;

-    Gather, ye braves, from every camp,

-      To cheer them home again.

-    What though to-day they did not bleed

-      To share our victory,

-    We reap the harvest of their seed,

-      So victors still they be;

-    From faction they our people freed,

-      And now our land is free.

-

-           *       *       *       *       *

-

-    Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake

-      The city with your strain;

-    Your loudest music cannot break

-      The felon’s rest again.

-    His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,

-      Nor left a single ray,

-    For all that but this moment shone

-      Retreat before the day;

-    But that last, loving, pitying one

-      Has borne his soul away.

-

-    “Died in his cell”--and nothing more;

-      ’Twas all his comrades heard;

-    But of the dream he had before

-      He died,--oh, not a word!

-    They found him on the coarse straw bed,

-      A smile upon his face,

-    And, “Number 28 found dead,”

-      Was whispered round the place;

-    And the jail doctor shook his head

-      And wondered at the case!

-

-

-

-

-THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]

-

-

-    An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,

-      ’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,

-    There is not much fun in recovering rent

-      Where the Land League has hold of the people;

-                But upheaval of earth

-                Is good reason for mirth,

-        ’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,

-                Compared to a seat

-                Where the Commoners meet

-        When Mulligan rises to order.

-

-    A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,

-      Catarrhic attacks are not charming,

-    There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain

-      That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.

-                Should close diagnosis

-                Reveal your probocis

-        To be of your weakness recorder,

-                You might foolishly curse;

-                But it’s very much worse

-        When Mulligan rises to order.

-

-    The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,

-      A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,

-    Are music compared to the agonized yell

-      Of rage and derision, his greeting;

-                You go home to your bed

-                With a pain in your head,

-        By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;

-                Your sleep is a blight,

-                Your comfort takes flight,

-                Your breathing is tight,

-                You scratch and you bite,

-                Or you wake with affright

-                As you dream through the night

-        That Mulligan rises to order!

-

-

-

-

-ERIN MACHREE (1798).

-

-

-    The sun had gone down in a halo of glory,

-      And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray

-    On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,

-      The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.

-    Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,

-    And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,

-    We gathered together in sorrow and weeping

-      For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!

-

-    From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,

-      Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;

-    We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,

-      And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.

-    Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us

-    We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,

-    While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus

-      That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!

-

-    But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,

-      Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;

-    When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,

-      ’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!

-    Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,

-    The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,

-    Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying

-      The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!

-

-    Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow

-      With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;

-    Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow--

-      That morning must dawn on our island at last.

-    Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;

-    Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them

-    To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them

-      To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!

-

-

-

-

-THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.

-

-

-When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years

-ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret

-conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he

-decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and

-Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly

-attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently

-to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the

-combined detective forces.

-

-Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff

-of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua

-Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to

-Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his

-impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is

-fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul

-aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely

-jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount

-Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,

-cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.

-

-She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional

-nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all

-the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a

-renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his

-constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,

-in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in

-petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix

-surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his

-coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces.

-Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the

-postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was

-quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to

-witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the

-other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a

-miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging

-promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase

-to that winning post, the door.

-

-Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of

-night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst

-out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be

-snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the

-amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would

-remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of

-slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of

-feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.

-

-Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra

-professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,

-but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or

-other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of

-civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed

-on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any

-postal manual.

-

-Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not

-phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad

-fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our

-rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.

-London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and

-cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to

-Love’s young dream in the entire A division.

-

-He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids

-either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and

-there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a

-maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted

-brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every

-five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a

-week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a

-school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or

-so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular

-as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed

-around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of

-sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If

-accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and

-forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.

-

-In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen

-cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four

-washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.

-

-His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent

-intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley

-Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of

-promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare

-not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet

-day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big

-brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted

-to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular

-London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.

-

-No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all

-these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he

-brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been

-kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not

-been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful

-affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,

-Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2

-guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”

-

-The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer

-in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the

-elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the

-confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their

-secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the

-pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.

-

-By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It

-was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,

-but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see

-her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill

-under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.

-

-He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest

-observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”

-he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold

-forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,

-mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight

-effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,

-water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no

-response.

-

-“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens

-reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up

-alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a

-disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and

-electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a

-stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred

-spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,

-of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare

-the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,

-and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with

-me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or

-Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest

-Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or

-whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”

-

-And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the

-bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of

-which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of

-plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool

-shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman

-was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at

-robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in

-the shape of tears.

-

-The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted

-Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the

-most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t

-tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish

-colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a

-charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought

-it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’

-figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.

-

-This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which

-shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit

-those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily

-Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping

-vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to

-remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins

-himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of

-his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at

-least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric

-light.

-

-

-

-

-BALFOUR’S WISH.

-

-

-    When members have taken their usual places,

-      And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,

-    The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,

-      Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;

-    And as, one by one, question follows on question,

-      Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,

-    In agony mental that spoils his digestion,

-      But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”

-

-    “Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,

-      “How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”

-    “Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,

-      “The average size of potatoes in Clare?”

-    A third seeks a legal opinion, without

-      Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,

-    And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,

-      While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.

-

-    Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,

-      Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,

-    What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?

-      Does he ever indulge in the national car?

-    Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?

-      Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?

-    And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,

-      “Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”

-

-

-

-

-OUR CAUSE.

-

-

-    Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,

-    Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,

-    Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,

-    Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,

-    Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,

-    With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:

-    Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,

-    For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!

-

-    Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,

-    And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,

-    And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,

-    They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.

-    The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,

-    No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,

-    But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,

-    The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.

-

-    It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;

-    It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;

-    O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more

-    Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.

-    Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,

-    And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;

-    But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,

-    And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.

-

-    What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,

-    That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,

-    That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,

-    Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?

-    ’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,

-    No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;

-    Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,

-    And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!

-

-

-

-

-SERVED HIM RIGHT.

-

-     [An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the

-     Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat

-     right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor

-     creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”--_London

-     Graphic._]

-

-

-    I have no tears for brother Pat,

-      Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,

-    On the Egyptian desert, that

-      He might assist in England’s glory.

-    The foes he fought were not his own,

-      Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;

-    Then why should I his fate bemoan?

-      O brother, faithless and degraded!

-

-    He saw how Saxon laws at home

-      Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,

-    Why should he cross the ocean’s foam

-      To place that hated yoke on others?

-    The Arabs slew him in a fight

-      For all by brave and free men cherished--

-    Ay, for the cause of truth and right,

-      For which his kith and kin had perished.

-

-    No Arab chief in Ninety-eight

-      Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;

-    They lent no spears to swell the hate

-      Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.

-    But those who wrapt our homes in flame

-      And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle--

-    It was for them--oh, burning shame!

-      My brother gave his life in battle.

-

-    Sure, every memory of late

-      Must from his wretched heart have vanished;

-    Our hills and valleys desolate,

-      Our ruined homes, our people banished.

-    And yet, God knows, he learned in youth

-      The gloomy story of his sireland--

-    Drank in at mother’s knees the truth

-      That England is the scourge of Ireland.

-

-    I cannot weep for brother Pat--

-      I hate the hellish cause he died for;

-    False traitor to the freedom that

-      His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;

-    E’en when in tearful dreams I see

-      The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,

-    My grief is changed to anger. He

-      Was treacherous to the land that bore him!

-

-

-

-

-RAPPAREE SONG.

-

-

-    Come up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,

-    And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;

-    The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,

-    And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.

-    Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,

-    And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:

-    Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears

-    We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.

-

-    They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die

-    Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;

-    Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,

-    And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;

-    Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows--

-    They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;

-    And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,

-    Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!

-

-    We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,

-    We’re traitors because we are true to our land,

-    And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel

-    That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!

-    They have hunted us down now for many a day;

-    To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;

-    For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,

-    Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.

-

-

-

-

-TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.

-

-

-    You tendered us when famine came

-      The pity of a thought,

-    Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame

-      And hearts and souls you’d bought.

-    Time’s wheel turns round--you’ve lost your place,

-    And right into your tyrant face,

-                Your jibes and sneers

-                Of many years

-                At victims’ tears

-                  Are thrown,

-                And in God’s name,

-                Our hearts aflame,

-                To-day we claim

-                  Our own!

-

-    Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,

-      Muscle and brain we wrought.

-    Toiled, starved, and died--scarce for ourselves

-      The crumbs of Lazarus sought;

-    And when ye flung us out a crust,

-    Our faces grovelling in the dust,

-          We gave ye thanks--

-          No prize, all blanks

-          In our poor ranks

-            Was known;

-          But now, thank God,

-          We’ve spurned your rod,

-          And claim this sod

-            Our own!

-

-    We lift our faces to the sky

-      Where once our heads were bowed,

-    We breathe no more a timid sigh,

-      But speak our thoughts aloud.

-    From dizzy hill and peaceful plain

-    Our voices join in this refrain:

-          The seeds we sow,

-          The crops we grow,

-          The fields we mow,

-            Alone,

-          Without your aid

-          In cash or spade

-          At last are made

-            Our own!

-

-

-

-

-BALFOUR REJOICES.

-

-

-    So the toil of the session is over,

-      My woes for a period cease,

-    And hey for a journey by Dover

-      To latitudes promising peace;

-    Away to recuperate vigor--

-      Away from obstruction’s mad spell--

-    Away from the questions of Biggar--

-      Away from the taunts of Parnell.

-

-    No more my poor head shall be aching

-      With night after night of debate--

-    No more shall my soul feel a quaking

-      At bald, irrepressible prate.

-    And, though ocean attack me with rigor,

-      While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell

-    On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,

-      And getting away from Parnell.

-

-    No more to be quizzed on each capture

-      Of priest or of peasant by night--

-    I could dance the can-can in my rapture,

-      Or stand on my head with delight.

-    Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,

-      Or like a wild Irishman yell

-    Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,

-      And don’t give--ahem--for Parnell!

-

-    Yet I feel an occasional spasm

-      At thoughts of returning at all,

-    ’Twere better to leap down a chasm

-      Or under an avalanche fall;

-    Or, fingers embracing the trigger,

-      Let the pistol’s report loudly tell

-    How I hated the queries of Biggar

-      And the dolorous talk of Parnell.

-

-

-

-

-A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.

-

-

-There may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that

-powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville _Sparrow_, is a

-sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be

-the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville

-_Sparrow_ (_vide_ its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in

-the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of

-Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and

-creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so

-tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the

-times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the

-Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York

-_Herald_ and _Tribune_ and _Times_ and the Boston _Herald_ and a score

-of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the

-_Sparrow_ felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by

-following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,

-advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold

-himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial

-back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He

-was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old

-copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the

-landed gentry of the country.

-

-His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of ground. “You

-know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were

-there. We’ve got to lick the New York _Herald_ and the rest of ’em.

-Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.

-There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious

-management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d

-better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do

-to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might

-skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and

-give us some lively telegrams.”

-

-Well, it _was_ lively for a few weeks after that in the _Sparrow_. One

-day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland--Seven Landlords Shot!” The next

-there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara--Six Agents

-Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the _Tribune_ came out

-with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there

-had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and

-seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious

-reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,

-and who didn’t grasp the fact that the _Tribune’s_ was a three-months’

-record, paralyzed the readers of the _Sparrow_ with a blood-curdling

-telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in

-the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in

-their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having

-suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and

-processes on the half-shell, to being stripped naked and turned loose

-for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time

-the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names

-eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to

-improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of

-variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred

-land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should

-diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:--

-

-     “GALWAY, Tuesday.--A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from

-     which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon

-     yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he

-     weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have

-     been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new

-     veins yet.”

-

-     “At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan

-     boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she

-     can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She

-     wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”

-

-This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the

-editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,

-according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers

-began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen

-murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of

-errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as

-well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the

-chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable bar next door.

-“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.

-Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,

-and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy

-for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the

-_Sparrow_, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish

-correspondent:--

-

-“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose

-energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a

-position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.

-As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,

-and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who

-for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his

-repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to

-abbreviate.

-

-“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose

-brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible

-marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,

-whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin

-elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature

-had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy

-proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we

-asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.

-

-“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of

-being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness

-will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was

-down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought

-me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything

-like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They

-were worn to threads.

-

-“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make

-a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could

-produce anything like a respectable shade.

-

-“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of

-the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the

-others.

-

-“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to

-bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.

-

-“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He

-felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion

-warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and

-succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary

-instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow

-you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.

-

-“‘I gave the man a shilling for him--in two sixpences, so that he could

-balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side

-pocket, it would have brought him down.

-

-“‘I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s

-centre of gravity.

-

-“‘I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the dining-room, but,

-fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.

-In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom

-of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He

-couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.

-He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his

-feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position

-when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect

-his tail.’

-

-“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double

-knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much

-so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot

-out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a

-moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the

-Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails

-in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had

-a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’

-concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of

-a knot on a dog’s tail!’”

-

-

-

-

-THE IRISH BRIGADE.

-

-

-    When in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,

-    They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,

-      A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.

-    A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,

-    Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;

-    And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,

-    ’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,

-      And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!

-

-    Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,

-    When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,--

-      The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.

-    They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,

-    And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,

-    Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,

-    Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose

-      From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!

-

-    When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,

-    Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,

-      Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;

-    The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang

-    O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang

-    From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might

-    Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,

-      Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!

-

-    Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,

-    Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,

-      In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.

-    Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,

-    They loved the green island, and died where they fought;

-    With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.

-    May we fight the battle of freedom as well

-      For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!

-

-

-

-

-SNOOKS.

-

-

-Justice in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the

-law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high

-priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist

-temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about

-one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British

-honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only

-pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very

-corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends

-to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should

-be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,

-he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable

-record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:--

-

-     “In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative

-     to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of

-     the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There

-     is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.

-     When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he

-     holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks

-     [_laughter_] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by

-     Snooks.’ [_Laughter._]”

-

-Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect

-that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of

-the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,

-deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest

-admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to

-that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:--

-

-    If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street

-    In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,

-    A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,

-      And confusion quite apparent in his looks,

-    An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,

-    You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;

-    The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,

-      ’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.

-

-    A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose

-    It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows

-    A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,

-      Which his dignity but very little brooks.

-    You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,

-    And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,

-    Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff--

-      ’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!

-

-

-

-

-CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.

-

-

-Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of

-whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into

-one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her

-like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism

-first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had

-just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel

-leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty

-conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was

-felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been

-foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at

-Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and

-hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and

-provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful

-conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had

-been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky

-Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The

-volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and

-eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible

-confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their

-presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,

-while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like

-Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were

-seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s

-residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with

-nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express

-for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the

-suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of

-engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the

-defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in

-England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they

-were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed

-to the depths of the silent waters.

-

-It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm

-existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was

-augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county

-constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest

-surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public

-buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags

-of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the

-sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like

-Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,

-and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent

-of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he

-ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.

-Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian

-bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon

-the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in

-garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer

-when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing

-the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the

-troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the

-ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the

-barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,

-bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,

-sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into

-as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.

-

-Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of

-Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without

-knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the

-Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,

-and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of

-Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,

-and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.

-Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and

-tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the

-entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow

-candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as

-to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an

-Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they

-were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold

-the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander

-carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the

-candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or

-was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege

-last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of

-the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a

-doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when

-at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to

-find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and

-would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions

-of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm

-tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that

-battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as

-the Caledonian Candlesticks.

-

-

-

-

-FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.

-

-

-    So they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,

-    A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;

-    Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,

-    And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;

-    All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,

-    With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,

-    Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,

-    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

-

-    When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,

-    Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,

-    Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,

-    Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;

-    With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,

-    With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,

-    You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,

-    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

-

-    No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?

-    You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;

-    You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,

-    And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;

-    But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,

-    The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,

-    A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,

-    So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

-

-

-

-

-FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.

-

-

-    Hurrah! we stand on Irish land,

-      Our hated foe before us,

-    And once for all, to rise or fall,

-      The green flag flying o’er us,

-    We’ve raised it proudly overhead.

-      God prosper our endeavor,

-    Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,

-      To keep it there forever!

-

-    We marched away at break of day,

-      And sweethearts left behind us,

-    To strike one blow at yon false foe,

-      Whose rusty fetters bind us.

-    For while we bear the name of men,

-      We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,

-    Oh, Ireland shall be free again,

-      Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!

-

-    We’ve listened long to traitors mean,

-      False England’s scarlet praising;

-    We’ve heard them mock our Irish green

-      Until our blood seemed blazing!

-    And chieftains, too, who should be true,

-      Have kept our ranks asunder,

-    But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned

-      In Freedom’s battle-thunder!

-

-    Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,

-      No matter who may lead ’em,

-    And here’s a curse on every slave

-      Who mars the cause of freedom!

-    Let leaders vain aside remain

-      Until their feuds are ended,

-    ’Tis by the man who knows no clan

-      Our flag must be defended.

-

-    We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,

-      From Limerick’s walls to Derry,

-    Bold ramblers from the County Clare

-      And mountaineers from Kerry.

-    We’ll chase our alien foes away,

-      We’ll tear our bonds asunder;

-    We care not who’s to lead to-day,

-      _We’ll_ fight and conquer under!

-

-

-

-

-THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.[D]

-

-

-    Far away from the home and the friends they love best,

-    ’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;

-    Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot

-    Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!

-

-    In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,

-    With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;

-    And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,

-    On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!

-

-    Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,

-    True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,

-    With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree--

-    Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!

-

-    When they took them away from that desolate place,

-    They found death had left a bright smile on each face,

-    So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see

-    How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!

-

-    For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind

-    The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;

-    And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,

-    Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!

-

-    Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,

-    Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;

-    And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave

-    Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!

-

-

-

-

-DEATH’S VICTORY.

-

-IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.

-

-

-    The Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;

-    The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;

-    For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,

-    And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.

-

-    But with these ’tis not death--for through every age,

-    In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,

-    In the stories they tell, the examples they give,

-    Of Genius and Truth--he will live! he will live!

-

-    With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine

-    To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;

-    In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,

-    To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.

-

-    But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace

-    The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,

-    The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,

-    That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?

-

-    Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave

-    Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;

-    No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed--

-    He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.

-

-

-

-

-THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.

-

-

-    Bear it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,

-      On, on, through the smoke and the glare;

-    Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,

-      We will plant it triumphantly there.

-    Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,

-      ’Twas lost at the base of the hill,

-    See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,

-      Our flag waves triumphantly still!

-

-    We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,

-      In sunshine and shower, side by side;

-    To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,

-      Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;

-    And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,

-      Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,

-    And our foes even then shall behold that above us

-      Our flag waves triumphantly still!

-

-    ’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;

-      The flag that our children shall bear

-    When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder

-      Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.

-    ’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,

-      And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill

-    To see in the land of their love and devotion

-      Our flag wave triumphantly still.

-

-

-

-

-THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.

-

-

-    Come kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and

-    from North,

-    Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!

-    It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak

-    The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;

-    It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,

-    From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,

-    With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,

-    To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.

-

-    Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?

-    Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?

-    Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod

-    By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?

-    ’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,

-    Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?

-    No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand

-    For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!

-

-    By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those

-    Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;

-    By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;

-    By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;

-    By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,

-    And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,

-    Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,

-    Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!

-

-

-

-

-HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.

-

-

-    Arouse ye from your slumbering,

-      Awake to life once more,

-    The time for idle pleadings

-      And for vain regrets is o’er;

-    We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,

-      But in a fight like men,

-    With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms

-      We’ll win our own again.

-

-        Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!

-          Till death we stand,

-          To make our land

-            A nation proud and free.

-

-    We bent unto the tyrant,

-      And we prayed in vain for years,

-    But now we’re going to try, boys,

-      Rifle-balls instead of tears.

-    Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,

-      The rolling of the drum,

-    And in future our petitions

-      From the cannon’s mouth shall come.--Hurrah!

-

-    From Galway right to Wicklow,

-      And from Cork to Donegal,

-    We’ll march once more for liberty

-      To win it or to fall.

-    We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,

-      And guard it with our steel;

-    We’ll show our foes what deadly blows

-      Each Irish arm can deal.--Hurrah!

-

-    In ages past the redcoats quailed

-      Before our fathers’ might;

-    Have we not still the courage left

-      To battle for the right?

-    Though cowards dread the troops in red,

-      We’ll cross their steel with joy,

-    And show that Irish valor was

-      Not spent at Fontenoy.

-

-    The wily knave, the coward slave,

-      To home and life may cling,

-    But there’s no place for falsehood’s face

-      Where gleaming sabres ring!

-    We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage

-      For Freedom and for Right;

-    Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,

-      Our last appeal is fight!

-

-

-

-

-THE MESSENGER.

-

-NOVEMBER 23, 1867.[E]

-

-

-    With bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there--

-    Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;

-    We questioned him with eager eyes--we had not power to speak,

-    For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!

-

-    Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,

-    We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;

-    And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,

-    While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!

-

-    And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,

-    And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;

-    A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,

-    That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!

-

-    And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might

-    Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;

-    Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,

-    Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel--

-

-    Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,

-    Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face--

-    Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,

-    It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!

-

-    Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,

-    And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;

-    What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,

-    For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!

-

-    He,[F] boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod

-    The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;

-    Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,

-    With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!

-

-    And he,[G] the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d

-    Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;

-    And such a death--the felon’s death--the death that villains die--

-    He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!

-

-    And, last of all, the father,[H] who that day would leave behind

-    Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:

-    No wonder if he faltered--’twas, oh God! a fearful test;

-    Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.

-

-    And these are murderers, they say--are cowards, base and vile:

-    These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle--

-    Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!

-    Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.

-

-

-

-

-A TYPICAL TRIAL.

-

-

-Joseph O’Graball, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in

-the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace

-and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid

-offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I

-shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real

-cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably

-one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional

-magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found

-temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed

-into law.

-

-Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality

-decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,

-but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to

-nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing

-faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest

-provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can

-tell an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of

-his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side

-with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every

-individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He

-is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and

-arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a

-mustache.

-

-Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life

-lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a

-simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is

-little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless

-there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting

-this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no

-leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But

-the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to

-arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,

-unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to

-his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?

-Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A

-goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about

-Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might

-have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in

-enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.

-

-With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark April night a

-sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,

-and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,

-they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty

-nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the

-indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,

-which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary

-evidence.

-

-“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”

-

-“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.

-

-“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,

-and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to

-destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious

-Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of

-England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and

-the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.

-

-“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset

-or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the

-ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”

-

-“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”

-

-“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”

-

-“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before

-my men. Come along.”

-

-Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and utterly amazed and

-confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,

-where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into

-the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones

-what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality

-a rich burlesque:--

-

-“Prisoner, what is your name?”

-

-“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”

-

-“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have

-been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of

-such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a

-note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is

-correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”

-

-“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”

-

-“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male

-gender?”

-

-“He wore breeches, anyhow.”

-

-“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,

-make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the

-customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case

-is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,

-prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”

-

-“Yes, your honor.”

-

-“And this hammer?”

-

-“Yes, your lordship.”

-

-“And these nails?”

-

-“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”

-

-“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and

-this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and

-revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your

-diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how

-far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of

-your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do

-you say?”

-

-“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood

-with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens

-be his bed; and the nails--the nails--the troth, I don’t know what I

-wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the

-sarjent.”

-

-“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.

-The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police

-barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand

-grenades.”

-

-“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but

-he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient

-magistrate proceeded:--

-

-“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”

-

-“Yes, your washup.”

-

-“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?”

-

-“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”

-

-“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter--a very

-important letter--from New York. Where did you discover that?”

-

-“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”

-

-“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream

-of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,

-prisoner, what is this drawing?”

-

-“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was

-thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so

-proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”

-

-“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with

-the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,

-with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that

-the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through

-that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”

-

-“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat

-should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking

-you are.”

-

-“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter

-is dated New York--the most treasonable locality on the face of the

-earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother--(of course you’re all brothers.

-Sergeant, make a note of that)--I write these few lines hoping they will

-find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.

-(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I

-cannot discern it just now.) I met the ould man--(Rossa, I suppose.

-Make a note, sergeant)--on landing. He would advise you not to kill the

-ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old--oh! horrible! I see it all. They have

-actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You

-might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,

-to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the

-rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means--they begin with the

-same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he

-mean by that?”

-

-“Um--um--yourself, I think, your washup.”

-

-“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel

-would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the

-overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed

-further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world

-might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such

-desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,

-I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence

-with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the

-highest sentence in my power--three months’ imprisonment--and, sergeant,

-just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”

-

-Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither

-himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought

-his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was

-convicted. And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of

-the coercion act.

-

-

-

-

-JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.

-

-

-    Oh pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;

-    And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright

-    That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night--

-    An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.

-    I am very, very sorry for the _Alabama’s_ pranks,

-    I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,

-    But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,

-    Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.

-

-    As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,

-    Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;

-    To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,

-    And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.

-    But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare

-    Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,

-    And send his best establishments cavorting through the air--

-    Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.

-

-    Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,

-    A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.

-    Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,

-    And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.

-    There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,

-    Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,

-    And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,

-    Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.

-

-    Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,

-    I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.

-    And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,

-    Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.

-    But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,

-    Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,

-    Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,

-    Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.

-

-

-

-

-THE STORY OF A BOMB.

-

-

-    Where Shannon’s waves with smiling face

-    Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,

-    A modest cabin stood beside

-    Its gentle perfume-laden tide.

-    The sunshine of an honest life,

-    A prattling child, a loving wife,

-    The joys of home, their blessings shed

-    Around the peasant tenant’s head.

-        The twinkling stars of summer skies

-        Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,

-        His baby’s locks the noonday rays

-        Encircled with a golden haze.

-

-    But drear December, dark and chill,

-    Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,

-    Sickness and famine scourged the land;

-    And in their train the landlord band,

-    And aiding in their mission dire

-    The liveried hounds in England’s hire.

-    In one brief hour their work was o’er,

-    A happy home was home no more.

-        The wintry skies looked sadly down,

-        Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,

-        Upon the babe that sobbed to rest

-        Upon its dying mother’s breast.

-

-    A week--a month--he had no power

-    To mark or count each anguished hour,

-    He knew not if ’twere night or day

-    When wife and infant passed away.

-    Without a hope to dull the pain

-    That numbed his heart and seared his brain,

-    Despair behind and gloom before,

-    He left his native Shannon’s shore,

-        Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press

-        The ship’s dark side with fond caress,

-        While chimes from many a distant bell

-        Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.

-

-    Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,

-    With earnest faces fierce and grim,

-    Are gathered near a silent swamp,

-    Rough toilers from a mining camp;

-    The rasping tones of Ulster greet

-    The voice of Munster soft and sweet,

-    And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,

-    But one and all are Ireland’s friends.

-        Yet whispering pines that bend above

-        Hear words of hatred, not of love;

-        Tears that from eyes of strong men fall

-        Are not of mercy, but of gall.

-

-    Each has a sickening tale to tell

-    Of England’s robber rule of hell,

-    Each has a deeply cherished cause

-    To hate her power and curse her laws.

-    “Then who will venture life, and go

-    To wreak our vengeance on this foe,

-    Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”

-    And he from Shannon answers “I!”

-        The western breezes catch the vow

-        That surges from his bosom now,

-        The exile’s vengeful brand to bear

-        And smite the tiger in his lair.

-

-    In Babylonian halls to-night

-    Are strains of mirth and flashing light,

-    The sheen of satin, gleaming gems

-    In scores of priceless diadems;

-    These are the butterflies, the drones,

-    Vampires who feed on blood and bones.

-    Ah, cruel parasites, beware,

-    One victim of your wrong is there.

-        The London skies are black with cloud

-        The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,

-        As by the despot’s citadel

-        A hand from Shannon fires the shell.

-

-    England, to thee and thine belongs

-    The memory of uncounted wrongs

-    That, multiplied through all the years,

-    Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.

-    Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,

-    Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold

-    Can turn the wrath thou hast defied

-    Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.

-        Thy future sky is overcast,

-        Thy halcyon days forever past,

-        Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm

-        Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.

-

-

-

-

-AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).

-

-

-    Avenging, though dim, with the dust of inaction,

-      And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,

-    With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,

-      And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,

-    The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,

-      Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,

-    To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,

-      That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.

-

-    The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,

-      With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,

-    But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number

-      That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.

-    And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,

-      To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,

-    The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow

-      The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.

-

-

-

-

-CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).

-

-

-    Christmas is here with its fun and frivolity,

-      Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,

-    Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,

-      We should be happy--for Christmas is here.

-    Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,

-      We have no heart for festivities gay--

-    Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,

-      Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.

-        Oh, dear! what will become of us?

-        Will they blow up every man or but some of us?

-        Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!

-        Give us a rest--we are pining away.

-

-    Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior

-      To the dread terrors that nightly control

-    All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,

-      Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!

-    Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,

-      Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,

-    For we may not place a moment’s dependency

-      How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!

-        O Lord! but the immensity

-        Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity

-        Splits through the dullest official head’s density,

-        Turning our locks into premature gray.

-

-    Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,

-      Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,

-    Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,

-      Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.

-    How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,

-      When it may shortly be scattered around,

-    With scarce a prospect--oh future precarious!

-      That a brass button would ever be found?

-        Oh, dear! is there a river in

-        England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in

-        Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in

-        Each beating heart that is left above ground?

-

-

-

-

-IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).

-

-

-    Oh, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears

-    Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,

-    Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?

-    The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?

-    In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom

-    Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;

-    See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown--

-    God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!

-

-    Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons

-    Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,

-    And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear

-    Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;

-    Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow

-    That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?

-    Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,

-    God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!

-

-    Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest

-    From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;

-    May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped

-    Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;

-    For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,

-    Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,

-    Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;

-    So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!

-

-

-

-

-JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.

-

-

-    John Bull looked haggard and drear

-                            With fear,

-    As the bells rang out the old year,

-                            “Oh, dear!”

-    He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,

-    I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,

-    My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,--

-                            It’s queer.

-

-    “With Hans I would like to agree,

-                            For he

-    Is an inch or two taller than me,

-                            You see;

-    But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,

-    And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,

-    And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout

-                                    Mit glee.’

-

-    “Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way

-                                    Is gay

-    At my numerous signs of decay

-                                    Each day;

-    He snaps his fingers right under my nose,

-    Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,

-    And has not a pitying word for my woes

-                                    To say.

-

-    “I once could warn Ivan the bear--

-                                    Take care

-    How the lion you stir in his lair,

-                                    Beware!

-    But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,

-    And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,

-    And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat

-                                    Out there.

-

-    “But my worst and my ugliest fright,

-                                    A sight

-    That keeps me in shivering plight

-                                    All night,

-    Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,

-    He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,

-    And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know

-                                    His might!

-

-    “So for me there’s no Happy New Year,

-                                  Oh, dear!

-    But doubt, and misgiving, and fear

-                                  Are here.

-    My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,

-    They cuff me before and they kick me behind,

-    And in all the world not a friend can I find

-                                  To cheer!”

-

-

-

-

-READY AND STEADY.

-

-A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).

-

-

-    Ready, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,

-      Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;

-    Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,

-      Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.

-    Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor

-      Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;

-    Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,

-      You must decide in the dawning new year.

-

-    Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,

-      Comrade or foeman?--your choice must be made;

-    Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,

-      Neither has room for a neutral brigade.

-    Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,

-      There is no welcome or place for you here;

-    Arms but of you men--fearless and true men--

-      Strike the last blow in the coming new year.

-

-    Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,

-      Victory marches, but never despair;

-    Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance

-      Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.

-    Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,

-      Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,

-    Then, be your story sadness or glory,

-      Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.

-

-

-

-

-WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.

-

-

-So you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable

-of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly

-busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.

-

-You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the

-landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any

-overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of

-income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad

-luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,

-and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police

-in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered

-on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their

-money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent

-collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been

-easily managed without a peeler at all, but the landlords wanted bad to

-force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from

-them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in

-and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.

-

-So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by

-playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at

-their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting

-fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture

-outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each

-other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date

-lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,

-and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain

-Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they

-were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner

-recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”

-and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special

-correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like

-journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be

-dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,

-blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in

-Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from

-the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible

-state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar

-contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings

-of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole _corps d’armee_ and a

-part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs

-and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised

-to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,

-Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that

-head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he

-didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his

-walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly

-have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have

-found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.

-

-Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the

-parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,

-in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever

-distilled in these parts--and that’s a big word. The still was away

-somewhere in the mountains,--it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into

-geographical details,--and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger

-between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the

-towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to

-the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,

-and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe

-that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of

-that.

-

-Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and

-one day some sleeveen--it was never found out who the stag was--came

-into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat Moran had

-guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew

-that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat

-had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and

-as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband

-material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if

-he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of

-dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no

-position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might

-be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his

-brain.

-

-In five minutes he was _en route_ for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary

-men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did

-find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried

-consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen

-which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,

-and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of

-whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was

-lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,

-awaiting the crisis.

-

-The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The

-search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and

-seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They

-sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem

-examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with

-their bayonets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander

-went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He

-found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back

-with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.

-

-Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung

-to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.

-

-“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his

-foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first

-object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and

-poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.

-

-“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very

-bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this

-blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck

-on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;

-and now--”

-

-But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the

-house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with

-his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a

-pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He

-would have been left in the cold that day.

-

-You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran

-fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to

-Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.

-He would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who

-heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp

-of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There

-never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold

-of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,

-eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly

-ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur

-and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept

-upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His

-tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could

-utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him

-how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives

-it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to

-accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a

-[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]

-bad habit.”

-

-“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has

-been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has

-wasted his opportunities.”

-

-“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank

-[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I

-can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, ---- my eyes!”

-[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].

-

-“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.”

-

-“How the ---- [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and

-theological disquisitions] can I?”

-

-His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough

-scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of

-an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to

-Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a

-note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two

-three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of

-pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand

-and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he

-wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with

-himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions

-every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife

-that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over

-a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the

-arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had

-parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and

-didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better

-half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he

-offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this

-side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.

-

-His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his

-report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him

-sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official

-archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The

-reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into

-a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.

-Strange story, ain’t it?

-

-

-

-

-THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.[I]

-

-BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.

-

-

-    Ghastly white with affright,

-      Down stairs they thundered,

-    Peelers and grenadiers--

-      Nearly a hundred.

-

-    Out of doors shrieking loud

-      Rushed the scared hundred,

-    They had no wish to be

-      Blown up or sundered.

-    Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,

-    “Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,

-    Wildly in flight they sped--

-            Disgruntled hundred.

-

-    Bang! went that bombshell near,

-    Were they o’ercome with fear?

-    You bet your boots they were--

-            All of the hundred;

-    Theirs not to question why

-    Roof soared aloft to sky--

-    Theirs but to cut and fly

-            Sensible hundred.

-

-    Women to right of them,

-    Women to left of them,

-    Children in front of them

-            Fainted or wondered;

-    But they were trained too well--

-    They knew what meant that shell,

-    So with a gruesome yell,

-    Head over heels, pell-mell,

-            Scattered the hundred.

-

-    Did they flash sabres bare

-    Out on the trembling air?

-    No, they just left them there,

-            There to be plundered;

-    And through the struggling mass,

-    Matron and babe and lass,

-    Plunged and strove hard to pass,

-    Choking and gasping--

-            Ah, horrified hundred.

-

-    Glass smashed to right of them,

-    Beams flew to left of them,

-    Walls gaped in front of them,

-            Shattered and sundered;

-    All round the citadel,

-    Stormed by that awful shell,

-    Plaster and brickbats fell

-    Down on their heads in storms.

-    Oh, it was worse than hell;

-    Out over prostrate forms

-            Charged all the hundred.

-

-    When shall the record fade

-    Of the quick time they made?

-            All the world wondered.

-    Greyhound or Arab steed

-    Could not excel the speed

-            Of that swift hundred.

-

-

-

-

-AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.[J]

-

-

-    Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;

-      Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;

-    Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,

-      Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!

-    Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;

-      Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,

-    Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken

-      Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.

-

-    Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;

-      Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.

-    Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,

-      Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.

-    The iron has entered your souls, and forever

-      May it brand you as craven and false to your race;

-    May the years that roll by bring oblivion never

-      To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.

-

-    Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances

-      Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,

-    Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances

-      Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.

-    Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,

-      Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,

-    Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,

-      By coating in slime every link of your chain.

-

-    But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember

-      The people and ye are no longer the same,

-    And every heart where one flickering ember

-      Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.

-    Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered

-      God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.

-    The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,

-      Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.

-

-    When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,

-      When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,

-    Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished

-      While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.

-    In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,

-      When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,

-    Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,

-      In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.

-

-

-

-

-EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.

-

-

-For enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to

-“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American

-newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of

-one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,

-if we are to believe his friends.

-

-Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed

-scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.

-

-When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event

-on the bandages.

-

-When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange

-demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his

-trombone.

-

-He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition engraven on blocks of

-ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway

-collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the

-mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after

-the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.

-

-But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few

-years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked

-up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of

-making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage

-soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the

-ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African

-substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for

-luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.

-

-Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to

-take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out

-for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of

-night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded

-its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of

-adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s

-kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.

-

-He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once

-half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and

-toothsome brown; still he had survived.

-

-But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable

-adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory

-since Stanley had left.

-

-Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by

-such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero

-in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on

-their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked

-backs.

-

-Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the

-speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an

-escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but

-for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of

-the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!

-

-

-

-

-A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.

-

-

-He was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the

-cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common

-herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations

-that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he

-wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the

-principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them

-for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of

-England,” “the President of France,” “the King of Italy,” “the Emperor

-of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.

-He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual

-appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the

-saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;

-Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on

-all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had

-planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the

-knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s

-destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy

-morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,

-sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit

-him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”

-

-

-

-

-THE LION’S LAMENTATION.

-

-

-    They are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,

-        Over the frontier they’re swarming;

-    And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,

-        But grin as if its melody were charming;

-    Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,

-    Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?

-    Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?

-        Really, the prospect is alarming.

-

-    ’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,

-        Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;

-    We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,

-        But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.

-    No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,

-    From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,

-    Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,

-        Except he be a Corydon or Carey.

-

-    Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,

-        Am I not your father and your mother?

-    Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,

-        Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.

-    Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,

-    All the dudes of London your image will caress,

-    Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,

-        And we’ll be the world to one another.

-

-    Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?

-        The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,

-    Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,

-        Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?

-    O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!

-    Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,

-    And--my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal--

-        That d--d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!

-

-

-

-

-MEMORIAL ODE

-

-TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF

-VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

-

-

-    We meet to-night to greet a name

-      Symbolical for fifty years

-    Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,

-      Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.

-    To mingle with the empty glee

-      Of laugh and cheer from English throat,

-    A new tone in this Jubilee,--

-      A strong, discordant, Irish note.

-

-    What has she done for us or ours;

-      What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;

-    That in her garlanding of flowers

-      We should conceal our Irish chain?

-    When on the dreary roadside lying

-    Were babe and mother faint and dying,

-    When heaped were nameless Irish graves,

-    When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,

-    When every blast

-    That swept the mast

-    Of fever ship was moaning, sighing

-    The story of an awful crime

-    That ringing down the aisles of Time

-    Has filled the universe with song--

-    A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong--

-    What act of mercy, gentle, human,

-        What deed of grace to prove her woman,

-        What sign gave she that Irish true man

-          Could treasure in his heart to be

-          A token of her Jubilee?

-

-        She came when but one spring had spread

-          Its buds above our dark decay,

-        Around, among, between the dead,

-          Her idle, pompous journey lay,

-        She saw a million graves, but shed

-          No tear to wash the sin away.

-        Before or since what ear hath heard

-          In all our years of dark eclipse

-        One feeble protest, or a word

-          Of pity from her queenly lips.

-        Nay, when our fearsome famine wail

-          Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,

-        And he stretched hand to save the Gael,

-          Her jealous pride returned his dole.

-    For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,

-    But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.

-

-        A faithful mother--so the bear

-          That rends the bleating lamb apart,

-        And brings it with her cubs to share,

-          Betrays a fond, maternal heart.

-    And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side

-    By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.

-    A faithful wife--from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice

-    Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert--poor Myles Joyce.[K]

-    And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,

-    At memory of the loved ones lost--butchered in this half-century’s reign.

-

-    Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims

-          of landlord wrath;

-    Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the

-          Atlantic’s lonely path;

-    Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back

-          from the scaffold’s gloom;

-    Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of

-          madhouse and union tomb;

-    A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to

-          West over every sea,

-    Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march

-          in her Jubilee.

-

-    Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,

-    Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands

-          and swear to-night

-    To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm,

-          through good and ill,

-    Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.

-    Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,

-    Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.

-

-

-

-

-AN ORANGE ORATION.

-

-

-In no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find

-the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are

-Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from

-Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German

-independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to

-the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of

-the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the

-persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as

-steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of

-the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious

-nation--Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,

-Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant

-nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so

-irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the

-voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a

-description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in

-love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they

-are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will

-find his natural place in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the

-benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent

-features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.

-

-Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in

-Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far

-penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,

-as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well

-testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything

-connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of

-superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest

-a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a

-lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence

-to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that

-England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently

-the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical

-composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a

-notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to

-shun everything green as he would the small-pox--there was only one

-color for a devout Christian to patronize--orange. God had not decorated

-the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful

-tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,

-when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose

-ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an

-Orangeman of the deepest purple dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural

-and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his

-heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie

-down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp

-to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions

-on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old

-woman who declined to shout “To h--with the Pope” at his modest request.

-

-He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,

-of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that

-awakens the enthusiasm of his class:--

-

-“Brethren--We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of

-the great, the glorious, the pious, and the--the--the Orange-headed

-William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,

-I--I--as a matter of fact I--I--get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time

-in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity

-to--to--to, in short--drink his memory--that is to say, to drink--to

-drink--to--oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes

-are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they

-swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,

-and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but

-are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their

-toes--their big toes--upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass

-this--this--this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put

-down, to a certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious

-gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls--of--of--well, they

-struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants

-won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more

-nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into

-Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has

-departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid

-believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.

-(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the

-sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and

-whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us

-and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill

-your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory

-of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;

-here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey

-with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of

-England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to

-glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of

-Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,

-bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of

-diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in

-the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free

-fights.)

-

-

-

-

-SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.

-

-

-    What Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world

-      Had a rule so universal as I claim?

-    What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled

-      As my ensign of destruction and of shame?

-    My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;

-      My dominion rules their bodies not alone,

-    But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,

-      And their future, as their present, is my own.

-    Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!

-    Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!

-    Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,

-    Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.

-

-    Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;

-      His tortured slaves in death at last were free.

-    But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass

-      Belongs for all eternity to me.

-    The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,

-      If he once began to worship at my shrine

-    Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,

-      Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.

-    Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,

-    Do not give the drunkard time to even think.

-    In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,

-    Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!

-

-    Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me--

-      Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;

-    Common helots struggle madly to be free,

-      Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.

-    My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,

-      On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.

-    I whet the murderer’s knife--rob mother, children, wife--

-      And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.

-    Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,

-    Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know

-    God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink

-    Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!

-

-

-

-

-CONTRARY COGNOMENS.

-

-

-    If you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,

-    And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;

-    Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,

-    And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;

-    Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;

-    Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.

-    It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,

-    That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.

-

-    Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,

-    Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;

-    Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,

-    And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;

-    Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,

-    Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;

-    Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,

-    Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.

-

-

-

-

-AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.

-

-

-    Angelina Seraphina

-      Wilhelmina Murphy,

-    See on knees here Ebenezer

-      Julius Cæsar Durphy.

-    I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken

-      To a dozen ladies,

-    Rose and Ella, Annabella,

-      And Mirella Bradys.

-    What to me now e’er can be now

-      Hippolita Flanagan?

-    Or sweet Dora Leonora

-      Otherwise O’Branagan?

-    Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe

-      Anastatia Hoolahan?

-    Or Miranda Alexandra

-      May Amanda Woolahan?

-

-    Roderigo Paul Diego

-      Burke may try his part again;

-    Or Bernardo Leonardo

-      Furey seek your heart again.

-    But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;

-      Just espouse my cause, my dear,

-    And I swear I’ll give our heir

-      A name to break your jaws, my dear!

-

-

-

-

-THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.

-

-

-    He slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,

-    A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;

-    And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by--

-    The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!

-

-    Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;

-    Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;

-    Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,

-    He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.

-

-    He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;

-    Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;

-    He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won--

-    He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!

-

-    His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,

-    Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.

-    A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,

-    As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.

-

-    He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,

-    He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,

-    He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;

-    And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”

-

-    His dream was changed: again he stood--and she was by his side,

-    Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;

-    Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,

-    When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!

-

-    The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;

-    Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.

-    The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,

-    And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!

-

-    He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;

-    Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.

-    He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,

-    And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!

-

-    A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;

-    He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,--but now in death!

-    The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,

-    And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.

-

-

-

-

-FREDERICK’S FOLLY.

-

-

-In a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from

-Rathmines,--which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of

-the Hibernian metropolis,--there boarded, lodged, and sent out his

-washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young

-gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in

-that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer

-walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day

-whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To

-spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose

-to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the

-clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his

-official signature.

-

-Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was

-also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his

-landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling

-Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.

-But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a

-quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his

-face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less

-susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.

-He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He

-would fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine

-weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &

-Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to

-change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut

-article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a

-countess.

-

-He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having

-time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.

-He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British

-Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being

-subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four

-dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.

-Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely

-got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium

-before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not--well, not quite

-a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly

-martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or

-the--hem--nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.

-

-“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial

-artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of--I mean as the

-raven’s wing.”

-

-Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought

-of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the

-dye.

-

-“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the

-scissors.

-

-It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed

-sort of a mustache--what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and

-odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between

-the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the

-coiffeur’s opinion.

-

-“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a

-beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”

-

-A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.

-

-“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of

-your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the

-lather-pot.

-

-They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar

-remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the

-principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed

-with his evil genius.

-

-“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as

-a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”

-

-Alas! He took the Depilatory.

-

-“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the

-curling-tongs.

-

-No, he wasn’t.

-

-“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.

-Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”

-

-Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming

-monotonous. However, he admitted that the speculator who bought his

-teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a

-fortune by the investment.

-

-“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your

-teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look

-gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.

-Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”

-

-Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic

-talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair

-dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had

-arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every

-now and then _en route_, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the

-bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He

-was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then

-another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for

-about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the

-last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,

-he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking

-hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he

-volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know

-him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s

-astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic

-personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the

-house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the

-domestic doorstep, replied emphatically, “I should rather think so!”

-upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.

-

-When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that

-Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting

-his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of

-supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below

-Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred

-gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that

-there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on

-the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested

-himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.

-

-At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning

-sob of fate, the candle went out!

-

-For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more

-composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,

-he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little

-Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his

-with envy and chagrin?

-

-He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined

-friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet

-requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his

-jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of

-Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a

-sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He

-tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not?

-He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration

-complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little

-Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber--to dream he had

-Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the

-Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when

-Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer--that last toddy, no

-doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.

-Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of

-civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out

-upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that

-made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the

-last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating

-madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable

-officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a

-square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police

-manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,

-and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with

-a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that

-he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of

-his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other

-assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he

-promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched

-forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,

-chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a

-varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded

-them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in

-wild and dripping confusion.

-

-That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an

-excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and

-there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque

-night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut

-lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his

-nose--cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird

-melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”

-

-It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his

-teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning

-over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his

-curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head

-altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction

-of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its

-growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had

-invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so

-renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of

-a walnut escritoire.

-

-Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had

-anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is

-now another’s.

-

-

-

-

-CONSTABLE X.

-

-

-    Whose walk is so stately and grand round the beat?

-    What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?

-    What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,

-    Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?

-    Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,

-    Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;

-    The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,

-    Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?

-

-    How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,

-    As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,

-    And kisses the book with a resonant smack,

-    Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.

-    Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat

-    To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,

-    And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex

-    Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.

-

-    Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours

-    When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,

-    And he, even he, that great creature, has known

-    Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.

-    And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt

-    Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.

-    For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,

-    Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.

-

-    Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,

-    But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,

-    He has even unbended to laughter and sport,

-    And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,

-    Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!

-    Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;

-    Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex

-    Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.

-

-

-

-

-LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.

-

-

-    Surrounded by bottles and flagons and bowls,

-    To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,

-    Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,

-    The Devil pursued his terrible task.

-    Hatred and lust, and all the horde

-    Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,

-    And when it was brimming with fever and sin,

-    He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.

-

-    Another flask in his hand he raised

-    And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,

-    As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,

-    Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,

-    Doses of poverty, doses of crime,

-    For every region, for every clime,

-    And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb

-    As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.

-

-    And then a barrel he seized to fill

-    With grief and affliction, pain and ill;

-    Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;

-    Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;

-    Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog

-    Till God’s image became but a senseless log,

-    And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer

-    As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.

-

-    The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth

-    As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.

-    And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,

-    North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.

-    And the demon yell as each toper fell,

-    Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!

-    Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,

-    Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”

-

-

-

-

-THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.

-

-

-    Am I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?

-    Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?

-    Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?

-    Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?

-    There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,

-    The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;

-    There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,

-    For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.

-

-    Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?

-    Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?

-    Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know

-    That muscle and brain were contented below;

-    Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold

-    Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,

-    For a very small gift from our riches contents

-    The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.

-

-    But now there’s a muttering startling and strange

-    From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,

-    A really absurd and ridiculous plan

-    To ostracize gold and to dignify man;

-    The base common herd won’t submit any more

-    To a rule that their fathers found proper before,

-    And the veriest scum of the gutters invents

-    Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.

-

-

-

-

-WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.

-

-AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.

-

-

-    Once again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column

-      That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;

-    Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping

-      ’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.

-

-    Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,

-      Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;

-    And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order--

-      The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.

-

-    At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding

-      Mists and clouds of two long decades--picture visions far away,

-    Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,

-      Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.

-

-    Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,

-      And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;

-    In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;

-      They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.

-

-    See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;

-      The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,

-    And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,

-      Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.

-

-    Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping

-      With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;

-    Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending

-      The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.

-

-    Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,

-      While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,

-    For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,

-      Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.

-

-           *       *       *       *       *

-

-    Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;

-      Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;

-    For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,

-      Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.

-

-    Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,

-      And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,

-    The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,

-      And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.

-

-

-

-

-THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.

-

-

-    Great chieftain, o’er thy silent clay

-    Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,

-    Grief knows no frontier line to-day.

-

-    Among the gifts the nation showers

-    Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours--

-    A shamrock wreath among the flowers.

-

-    A type its emerald leaflets three

-    Of thy best attributes will be--

-    Faith, Courage, and Humanity.

-

-    Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,

-    Courage that with disaster rose,

-    Mercy to brave but beaten foes.

-

-    When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine

-    In her defence with thee and thine

-    Our exiled race were found in line.

-

-    With thee we bore the storm and stress,

-    Hard-fought retreat and onward press

-    Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.

-

-    Thy eagle glances oft might scan

-    Our Celtic features in the van

-    When battle surged round Sheridan.

-

-    And never poured the crimson flood,

-    To mark where desperate valor stood,

-    But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.

-

-    So as your life-stream then we fed,

-    Where’er your own brave nation bled,

-    Our tears to-day with hers are shed.

-

-    Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,

-    Our grief now sobs with your regrets,

-    Our shamrocks fringe your violets.

-

-

-

-

-MAINE AND MAYO.

-

-

-    Six months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,

-    As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;

-    We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,

-    But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.

-    There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,

-    And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,

-    While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train

-    Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.

-

-    Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,

-    The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;

-    And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,

-    Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.

-    One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,

-    And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,

-    Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,

-    “I’m very glad to meet ye--I’m a stranger from Mayo.”

-

-    Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way

-    To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;

-    He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,

-    And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.

-    Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,

-    Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;

-    But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,

-    Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.

-

-    And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose

-    Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,

-    When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,

-    Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,

-    A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze

-    With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days--

-    “Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,

-    And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.

-

-           *       *       *       *       *

-

-    Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,

-    Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,

-    But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,

-    Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.

-    Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim

-    That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;

-    While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know

-    How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.

-

-

-

-

-A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.

-

-

-Sandy Row, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in

-Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its

-true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,

-the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from

-prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To

-h--with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its

-consecrated--whiskey consecrated--shore, that Papist foot would be

-carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it

-contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of

-the desecrated pavement.

-

-In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one

-Green--Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and

-immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread

-as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan

-Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in

-more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional

-anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his

-campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable

-commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,

-but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has

-suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half

-a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.

-

-In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in

-consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his

-back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,

-banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,

-blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National

-League invaders.

-

-For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners

-and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an

-assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal

-principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no

-salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.

-

-During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of

-Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a

-howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given

-musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent

-continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval

-for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor

-gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a

-short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’

-duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red

-Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached

-the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the

-influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with

-the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and

-variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in

-scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into

-which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with

-heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,

-and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;

-and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,

-and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening

-lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear

-at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs

-in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted

-yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the

-thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass

-kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,

-ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that

-you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.

-

-From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there

-isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or

-symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call

-it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about

-four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.

-

-The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to

-this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this

-systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old

-boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary

-utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established

-a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been

-exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate

-measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.

-They were adopted.

-

-Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order--each

-man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander--a

-kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously

-maddening marauders!

-

-Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,

-rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.

-

-Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving

-stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.

-

-The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and

-completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.

-

-Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a

-marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long

-cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.

-

-Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord

-Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes

-and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?

-

-About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis

-commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they

-had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some

-Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his

-night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.

-

-Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly

-raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly

-perfected.

-

-It was dark,--so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent

-choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle

-rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.

-

-Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught

-a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering

-gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a

-step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled

-round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a

-hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,

-and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different

-cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical

-training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,

-paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.

-

-Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,

-like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in

-the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by

-Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of

-the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron

-spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower

-of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he

-turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the

-grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels

-off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the

-air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all

-the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon

-his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.

-

-The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new

-veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the

-Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been

-witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the

-spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of

-pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and

-the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out

-by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men

-that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with

-pickaxes and shovels.

-

-Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111

-forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a

-tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He

-thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain

-their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for

-carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with

-the contents of a tinker’s budget--why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s

-all. They have one motto he appreciates:--

-

-    Whether on the scaffold high,

-      Or in the battle’s van,

-    The fittest place for man to die

-      Is where he dies for man.

-

-That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an

-old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not

-going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.

-1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:--

-

-    Here lies the body of Billy Green,

-    As true a grand master as ever was seen,

-    But although he was green and decidedly fat,

-    He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,

-        false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a

-        lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a

-        measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell

-        cat.

-

-

-

-

-THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.

-

-A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.

-

-

-    Down by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing

-    Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing--

-    For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:

-    Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath--

-    Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,

-    Curses in purest American; such

-    Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much

-    Room for the rest of the languages--there,

-    Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,

-    Naught but profanity ever in vogue,

-    Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.

-

-    Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether

-    God has ordained they should travel together,

-    But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,

-    Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.

-    Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,

-    Sunshine and harmony--natural growth.

-    While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,

-    Right down among us he stepped: all the while

-    Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,

-    And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,

-    Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.

-

-    Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins

-    Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;

-    Sang at our windows for all they were worth--

-    Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!

-    Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;

-    Nobody hunted the right or left bower;

-    Deserts put verdure on--one little flower

-    Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,

-    Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!

-    Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s _thurrum pogue_[L]

-    Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!

-

-

-

-

-ARAB WAR SONG.

-

-

-    Allah, il Allah! the infidel’s doom

-    Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.

-    The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,

-    And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.

-    The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,

-    Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.

-    How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!

-    Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!

-

-    The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,

-    When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,

-    But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free

-    As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;

-    And their valor will scatter his merciless bands

-    As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,

-    Their fury will break on his terrified host

-    With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.

-

-    Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride

-    He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;

-    He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast

-    As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;

-    And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array

-    Is melting before our wild charges in spray;

-    Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,

-    And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!

-

-    Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,

-    Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;

-    Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,

-    Better freedom in death than existence in chains.

-    On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,

-    See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!

-    Strike swiftly, and spare not--yon turbanless crowd

-    Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.

-

-

-

-

-HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.

-

-

-If every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block

-were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and

-what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a

-completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.

-Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.

-His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his

-place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have

-them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night

-to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.

-He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his

-gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful

-jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby

-through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay

-at the parlor door by a ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to

-take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue

-of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen

-variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him

-as a signal to chaw him up--under such circumstances one don’t feel

-inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.

-

-Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of

-life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of

-the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You

-never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some

-horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to

-envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had

-with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered

-hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power

-sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in

-a sling for a fortnight afterwards.

-

-Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all

-kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded

-slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he

-believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life

-that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest

-his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring

-his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him

-half an hour to sit down.

-

-But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion

-is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has

-carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in

-a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in

-a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he

-would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he

-has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he

-thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another

-crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred

-or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and

-didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round

-about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the

-mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a

-picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked

-before--that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s

-sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking

-attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve

-his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has

-travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic

-arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that

-he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not

-to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.

-With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going

-over his half-dozen ordinary albums it is really magnificent to be able

-to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his

-remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he

-can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs

-of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.

-

-

-

-

-NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.

-

-

-I have never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.

-

-I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.

-

-There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,

-who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my

-marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my

-string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.

-

-I thirsted for his blood.

-

-I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my

-part--in fact, it took several parts of me.

-

-I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled

-my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to

-complete the structure.

-

-Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of

-boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was

-illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,--the position. Figure

-2,--one for his nob. Figure 3,--the body blow. Figure 4,--the return.

-Figure 5,--the upper cut. Figure 6,--the cross-counter.

-

-I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,

-till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of

-P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or

-whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could

-have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”

-

-But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults

-with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed

-my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered

-“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the

-bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders

-and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a

-conquering hero.

-

-At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment

-had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself

-to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me

-when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his

-head.

-

-He came.

-

-I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the

-proper figures for the various stages of the battle.

-

-I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the

-improvised ring, tied a handkerchief for a belt round my waist, and

-wanted to shake hands _a la_ Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.

-

-Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another

-figure--which happened to be me.

-

-“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,

-because it resulted in two or three for _my_ nob, and while I was trying

-to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,

-“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the

-regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something

-came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground

-with the back of my head.

-

-I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called

-“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had

-to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my

-left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill

-soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I

-sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the

-other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared

-“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp--“He won’t let me,” before there

-was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,

-and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.

-

-I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen

-to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green

-sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more

-diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.

-

-

-

-

-THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.

-

-     [Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few

-     years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,

-     who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of

-     all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a

-     student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and

-     bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from

-     a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of

-     it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that

-     crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest

-     knocked him out in one short round.]

-

-

-    There once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.--

-    Dr. Blank we shall call him--a Crichton was he;

-    Not a science or language earth ever has known

-    But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own--

-    Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany--these

-    Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;

-    Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,

-    Theology, Medicine, Strategy--pshaw!

-    They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind

-    Which left intellects minor some eras behind.

-    ’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most

-    The Dons of the College--our doctor could boast

-    An intimate knowledge of every tongue

-    Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.

-    In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;

-    For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;

-    A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,

-    Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;

-    He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;

-    Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;

-    In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;

-    In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;

-    Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,

-    And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.

-    If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,

-    The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,

-    Not his be the blame--no, the odium must rest,

-    On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;

-    Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,

-    But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.

-

-

-

-

-A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.

-

-

-I would sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under

-the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so

-dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs

-up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for

-that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there

-that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home

-are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the

-executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic

-dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a

-conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not

-be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed

-a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his

-drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies of the day. I had

-barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey

-wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a

-red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a

-miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,

-a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various

-stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied

-articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with

-thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the

-two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags

-and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to

-guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced

-to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the

-odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the

-kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every

-contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started

-homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such

-stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear

-of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the

-irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was

-blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few

-dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney

-pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a

-garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their

-native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the

-situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,

-and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude

-of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,

-vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at

-irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and

-such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to

-count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It

-would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my

-top-coat was like!

-

-

-

-

-PEGGY O’SHEA.

-

-AN IRISH SERENADE.

-

-

-            The pale moon is beaming,

-              The bright stars are gleaming.

-            Awake from thy dreaming,

-              Acushla, arise!

-            For sure the moon’s light, dear,

-            Though vivid an’ bright, dear,

-            Is but darkest night, dear,

-              Compared with your eyes.

-                    Glimmerin’,

-                    Shimmerin’,

-    Down in the river there,

-      Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,

-    See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,

-      Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!

-

-        See, your own thrue love

-        Is waitin’ for you, love,

-        So waken anew, love,

-          An’ gladden my sight!

-        Don’t keep me quakin’ here,

-        Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,

-        Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,

-          All the long night;

-                  Quiverin’,

-                  Shiverin’,

-    Faith it’s Decimber, dear,

-      Freezes me, teases me--darlin’ don’t stay;

-    Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,

-      For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!

-

-        This morn had you been, love,

-        With me, you’d have seen, love,

-        A new dress of green, love,

-          I bought--for, you mind,

-        But last week you said, dear,

-        You hated the red, dear,

-        So get out of bed, dear,

-          An’ let down the blind!

-                  Shyly,

-                  Slyly,

-    Creep to the window now,

-      Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,

-    Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,

-      Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!

-

-        Why have you waited

-        So long, whin you stated

-        To me that you hated

-          The red of our foes?

-        While you are keepin’

-        Me here with your sleepin’

-        The color is creepin’

-          All over my nose!

-                  Face it,

-                  Chase it,

-    Meet it with bravery,

-      Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.

-    The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,

-      Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!

-

-        Och, you are there now,

-        So purty and fair now,

-        I raley declare, now

-          I’m murthered outright;

-        My mouth seems like butter,

-          I hardly can mutter

-        A sintince, or utter

-          A word, love, to-night.

-                Thumpin’

-                An’ bumpin’

-    An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,

-      Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,

-    And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’

-      How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!

-

-

-

-

-THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.

-

-

-    The summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,

-    Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;

-    The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,

-    Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.

-    Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain

-    Was one poor limping creature--the embodiment of pain.

-    His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,

-    Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;

-    His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,

-    And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;

-    Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,

-    For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.

-

-    I questioned him--this blighted one--I asked him what the reason

-    Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;

-    And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling

-    Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:--

-

-    “Don’t my uniform tell you that I

-      Am of the unfortunate band,

-    Whom you see day by day passing by,

-      Never pausing a moment to stand;

-    Who, in one perpetual round,

-      Forever are marching, until

-    It seems that while one of us stays overground

-      Fate ordains he shall never be still.

-

-    “‘Tis hard when the bright golden sun

-      Smiles out from a clear azure sky,

-    To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done

-      Till his glory has gone and passed by.

-    And e’en along green country lanes,

-      ’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,

-    And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,

-      Who would care to be tramping all day?

-

-    “Then why do you wonder to hear

-      An unlucky sad mortal complain,

-    Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,

-      In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?

-    Or say, are you looking for smiles

-      From a fellow who feels on the rack,

-    After walking some twenty odd miles

-      On a path like a porcupine’s back?

-

-    “They say that the Muscovite knout,

-      On the back of a troublesome peasant,

-    When wielded by hands that are stout,

-      Is decidedly very unpleasant.

-    The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,

-      Caused aught but delightful sensations,

-    But what were their tortures of old,

-      Compared to our new innovations?

-

-    “No martyr that ever yet died

-      In those times that have long passed away,

-    Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,

-      Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.

-    My feet are denuded of skin,

-      My toes every one are disjointed,

-    For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,

-      And the most of our pavement is pointed!

-

-    “Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,

-      Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,

-    Save where an occasional flaw

-      Leaves a hole in to gather the rain--”

-

-    Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek

-      That emptied a neighboring tavern,

-    He had planted one foot on a peak,

-      While the other was lost in a cavern!

-

-    Then his language assumed such a tone--

-      And one not by any means sweeter--

-    And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan

-      That they couldn’t be put into metre.

-    So thus my sad narrative ends,

-      As I left the poor tortured one raving,

-    And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends

-      Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.

-

-

-

-

-APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.

-

-

-If they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall

-have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s

-mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist

-Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the

-census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and

-on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her

-mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who

-is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage

-in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another

-ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan

-retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last

-column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical

-expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she

-filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,

-blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages

-afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be

-known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively

-on that occasion.

-

-Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary

-difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of

-them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she

-threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate, and her sitting

-weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a

-compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity

-is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,--occasionally.”

-

-If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal

-position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is

-fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on

-figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her

-appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of

-adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not

-called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or

-so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her

-record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful

-figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at

-that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years

-ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon

-and bottle-feeding.

-

-The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is

-the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it

-for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a

-commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey

-without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and

-lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the

-corner into our street on his return from a month’s absence he is the

-central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young

-Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his

-arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in

-his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.

-He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities

-until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.

-The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success

-as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal

-signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we

-call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,

-John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or

-Theodore--Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter

-fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we

-feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.

-“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or

-an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you

-short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We

-have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s

-at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,

-and--” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and

-knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be

-followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some

-of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered some refuge

-to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling

-whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be

-left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.

-

-But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a

-father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper

-should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist--there was another

-Robinson _en route_. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent

-the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came--in twos, in threes,

-in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,

-and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast

-in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt

-like Noah--only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the

-dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,

-and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers

-present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had

-been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room

-was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one

-corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the

-twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling

-with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church

-yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and

-he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?

-Send me a volume, four hundred pages, bound in morocco, forty names on

-a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two

-or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m

-ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,

-let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”

-and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson

-was at home this census time.

-

-

-

-

-NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.

-

-

-    Rank on rank they march together,

-    Through the lanes and o’er the heather,

-    And the rhythmic ringing beat

-    Of their measured swinging feet

-    Music bears in martial tone

-    To the land they call their own.

-    Happy land that proudly boasts,

-    Not coerced, unwilling hosts,

-    But around her throne can feel

-    Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,

-    Hearts whose love no bribes retain,

-    Hands that never strike in vain.

-

-    Through the fields of yellow grain,

-      Through the woods of leafy green,

-    Here and there on many a plain,

-      Are their snowy targets seen;

-    And the mountains echo back

-    From their peaks the rifles’ crack.

-

-    Freedom knows how keen of eye,

-      Firm of nerve and quick of finger,

-    Are the marksmen brave who vie

-      In the skill they freely bring her.

-    Bunker Hill and Concord tell

-    They have won their laurels well.

-

-    And should war assail our shore,

-      Still to guard it ever ready

-    As their fathers were of yore.

-      Calm, yet eager, true and steady,

-    Are the loyal ranks that play

-    But at mimic strife to-day.

-

-

-

-

-A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.

-

-

-They have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society

-rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.

-E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina

-cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.

-R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical

-instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a

-sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the

-bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of

-“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in

-which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment

-might be dangerous. It might have led to revolution, and it wouldn’t be

-logical--or geological--to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.

-

-I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific

-symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay

-ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of

-antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly

-mastodon.

-

-I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered

-during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour

-or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been

-kind enough to label them--“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land

-Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the

-Bone Age,” etc.

-

-I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement

-in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell

-what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the

-“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,

-with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been

-told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned

-not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery

-gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the

-whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be

-inspired by the sight of this--this--this ancient weapon--it is

-evidently a spear-head--which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic

-warrior of old has probably pierced many a proud invader’s breast. This

-spear-head, ladies and gentlemen--”

-

-I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty

-bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some

-repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the

-pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to

-finish a job outside!”

-

-

-

-

-JONES’S UMBRELLA.

-

-

-There has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past

-week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the

-whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the

-atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable

-character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth

-wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the

-heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses

-of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to

-have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in

-view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a

-scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar

-continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,

-principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford

-shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of

-an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,

-but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t disturb a seam in it.

-It has only one defect. Given sufficient space--say Yellowstone Park,

-and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when

-Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those

-occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left

-their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the

-umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower

-that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that

-umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the

-street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated

-arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the

-direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones

-held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones

-held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family

-quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops

-that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of

-confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and

-a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed

-and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,

-dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously

-about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It

-was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few

-shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and

-tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed

-by his coat-tails, and sat down once or twice quite unexpectedly in

-Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let

-the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He

-hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow

-restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.

-

-

-

-

-LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.

-

-

-The adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has

-nearly done for Guffin.

-

-Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his

-nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows

-much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.

-

-Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is

-poetic, she is romantic--in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,

-and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion

-with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than

-soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the

-prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money--so far,

-in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts

-it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,

-in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden--Mrs.

-Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no

-place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre

-when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin blighted the future of an

-ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of

-pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite

-fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank--a sort

-of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker

-has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no

-longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future

-porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,

-and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of

-sausages.

-

-The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her

-appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a

-martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.

-They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically

-and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the

-Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most

-vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.

-would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,

-housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,

-donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a

-hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,

-stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning

-to get gray with such orders as--“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval

-noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et

-demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head

-in the straw, and wonder why he was born.

-

-But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame

-aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.

-Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French

-at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told

-him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how

-Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron

-Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter

-performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is

-ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be

-a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell

-on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find

-it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a

-half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin

-can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the

-point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch

-a tent on.

-

-Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and

-when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is

-disappointing.

-

-But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might

-be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very

-much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and

-death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was

-leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against

-her beating heart, the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes

-turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey

-unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to

-squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the

-only seat that could accommodate her--the sofa, and looked as

-consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.

-Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched

-him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself

-wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,

-and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a

-half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or

-less, he broke into rebellion.

-

-“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a

-pig in a nightmare?”

-

-“Pig!” shrieked his wife.

-

-“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.

-

-“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of

-you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”

-

-“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.

-Julia, order the carriage.”

-

-Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl

-responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.

-

-“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”

-

-“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s

-Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you

-have a rasher?”

-

-“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,

-Julia, to quit this abode of--of--this abode of--this maison du diable,

-there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal

-Guffin.

-

-“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be

-in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”

-

-“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up

-la chapeau de mon pere.”

-

-“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.

-And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your

-French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.

-You’ve upset me so much with your d----d rubbishy parley-vooing and

-moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with

-a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if

-you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know

-what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll

-put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front

-door-step all day. D----n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next

-Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll

-begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let

-folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every

-house for two miles around.”

-

-There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their

-French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and

-child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped

-themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes

-out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the

-elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived

-this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is

-so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution

-of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for

-a shutter.

-

-

-

-

-CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]

-

-A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.

-

-

-    Oh! England’s the gem of the waters,

-      The pride of the foam-crested sea!

-    And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters

-      Are always contented and free!

-    Unknown are all want and starvation;

-      Her subjects are strangers to vice;

-    And the bulwarks of this model nation

-      Are Calcraft and Governor Price!

-

-    Wherever this proud nation’s standard

-      Unfurls its red folds to the light,

-    Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard

-      Of freedom, and progress, and right.

-    Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,

-      Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;

-    Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching

-      Of Calcraft and Governor Price!

-

-    From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,

-      Wherever their footsteps have trod,

-    With the aid of the bayonet and cannon

-      They’ve planted the altar of God!

-    And the teachers of heretic notions

-      Have been silent and quiet as mice,

-    For fear they should pay their devotions

-      At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!

-

-    Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter

-      A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?

-    Or breathes there a serf who would mutter

-      A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?

-    If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over

-      With a sound word or two of advice;

-    But if Irish, he soon will discover

-      The logic of Calcraft and Price!

-

-    Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven

-      You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,

-    When, horror! you might have been given

-      A Republican birthright to own!

-    Thank God, that your blood is untainted,

-      You’re subjects of England--how nice!--

-    You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted

-      With Calcraft or Governor Price!

-

-

-

-

-ENTITLED TO A RAISE.

-

-SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.

-

-

-    This is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,

-    To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;

-    When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,

-    And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.

-    And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,

-    Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,

-    His blood was cool--(discipline’s rule)--he made no moan, so he

-    Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.

-

-    This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,

-    But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,

-    He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,

-    And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.

-    He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,

-    He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;

-    He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,

-    So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?

-

-    And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;

-    With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;

-    Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,

-    But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.

-    He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,

-    And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;

-    He is silly, he is loyal,--he is all a Sub should be,

-    With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.

-

-

-

-

-THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.

-

-THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.

-

-

-    John Thompson was a postman who

-      Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,

-    And though not deeply read, ’tis true,

-      Was still a Man of Letters.

-

-    He paid attention to one Kate

-      Maria Julia Jervis,

-    But she did not appreciate

-      John Thompson’s Civil Service.

-

-    Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,

-      Nor let my love-suit fail,

-    Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,

-      And don’t Despatch this Mail.”

-

-    But she replied, in accents grave,

-      “I love you not--decamp!”

-    And when he spoke again--she gave

-      Her foot an Extra Stamp.

-

-    And cried, “My anger you awake,

-      Your speech on insult borders,

-    I’m poor, but I would scorn to take

-      Your vile Post-office Orders.”

-

-    Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,

-      And moaned in accents shivery,

-    “Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,

-      Pray pardon its Delivery.”

-

-    He left the room with footsteps slow,

-      A bitter lesson taught,

-    And then to counteract the blow,

-      A pillar-box he sought.

-

-    He felt how foolish was the tact

-      In courtship he had boasted,

-    And recognized the solemn fact

-      That he was badly Posted.

-

-

-

-

-SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.

-

-

-    The cobbler’s always cheerful, though

-      His path of life be crost,

-    He does not tear his hair in woe,

-      Whene’er his all is lost.

-

-    He welts a lot, but not the wife

-      With whom his lot is cast;

-    She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,

-      Still faithful to the last.

-

-    Onward his motto, aye, he strives

-      To grasp some other feat,

-    And in the dullest times contrives

-      Somehow to make ends meet.

-

-    The world may smite him without cause,

-      He never shuns its whacks,

-    And seldom grumbles at the laws

-      That regulate his tax.

-

-    We know but little of the good

-      His many acts reveal--

-    Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would

-      Their understandings heal.

-

-    And a much higher motive yet

-      His generous heart controls,

-    You would not see that saint forget

-      Their perishable souls.

-

-

-

-

-A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.

-

-

-The financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest

-shanty of Jones, in our street.

-

-“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at

-breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with

-the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the

-domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones

-works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t

-say less; he was afraid to say more.

-

-“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”

-

-Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour

-in question.

-

-“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished

-to know where you spent your evening.”

-

-“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a

-kind of a description of--you don’t understand these things, Maria, but

-we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I

-thought--that is, we thought--a few of us thought, you know--a whole lot

-of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand--to--to

-avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”

-

-“Oh, you consulted, then?”

-

-“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we

-decided on a whole lot of things.”

-

-“What time did you decide on breaking up?”

-

-“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish

-financiers--Baron Rothschild, and--and the rest of the Rothschilds, and

-the chief rabbis--and--and--and--all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve

-been working the oracle--and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here

-Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining

-matters as lucidly as was necessary.

-

-“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the

-almshouse before you die, at the rate--the poor rate--you’re going on.

-What else?”

-

-“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the

-monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal

-of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six

-per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things

-have gone so far that, that--”

-

-“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took

-your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the

-scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that

-you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about

-the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the

-proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled

-‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in

-the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians

-and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,

-the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat down in the coal scuttle,

-and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed

-some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried

-to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;

-and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your

-coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,

-you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red

-hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I

-have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for

-five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any

-longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed

-commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a

-remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it

-is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in

-a quiet kitchen in South Boston.

-

-

-

-

-AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.

-

-

-    Heigho for the morning, murky and dark,

-      When, heedless of threatening cloud,

-    I ventured to visit the green College park,

-      And mingled along with the crowd.

-    I am almost now on insanity’s brink,

-      And this I attribute to

-    Either a fairy attired in pink

-      Or an angel whose robe was blue.

-

-    The world considered my heart was flint,

-      And futile were womanly wiles--

-    Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,

-      Glances and glittering smiles.

-    I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,

-      My journey of life to go through,

-    But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,

-      To say nothing of beauty in blue.

-

-    I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,

-      Bachelor’s buttons and fare;

-    And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife

-      That Benedicts weepingly share.

-    But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink

-      To join the Hymeneal crew,

-    If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink

-      Or a lovely commander in blue.

-

-    I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place

-      For frivolous chatter and talk;

-    I was interested in every race,

-      Jump and hurdle and walk;

-    Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think--

-      Of course it can hardly be true--

-    That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,

-      And the mile by a stayer in blue.

-

-    It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,

-      For I mean in futurity’s days

-    When I go to races to cover my eyes

-      With glasses to temper my gaze,

-    Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink

-      Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,

-    Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink

-      Or equally dangerous blue.

-

-

-

-

-A MUSICAL REVENGE.

-

-

-I’m sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean

-of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is

-oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to

-sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed

-with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,

-and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with

-forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly

-residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly

-utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to

-undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be

-a welcome change.

-

-But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.

-For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers

-of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the

-trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his

-frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a

-fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations

-on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had _one_ night from me. They

-won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.

-

-I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the

-melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of

-his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my

-cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the

-tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising

-for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed

-successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured

-the presence of a fife and drum--principally drum--band from a Grand

-Army post.

-

-The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time

-all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to

-quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants

-of the disturbed district.

-

-But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the

-perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,

-till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or

-instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering

-locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,

-as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each

-artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The

-bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if

-all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s

-interference with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”

-with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled

-like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had

-never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The

-melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band

-wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of

-its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice

-assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of

-the occasion.

-

-It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division

-of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at

-suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand

-finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within

-half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a

-lifetime.

-

-If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them

-another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.

-

-

-

-

-A LIAR LAID OUT.

-

-

-We have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who

-certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give

-weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London

-_Times_ in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The

-whoppers that spreader of lies and light can tell would raise the hair

-on the head of an Egyptian mummy.

-

-But he met his match last week.

-

-I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an

-acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of

-course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing

-and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my

-friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that

-he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the

-truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in

-him--very much in him--it’s impossible to get it out of him.

-

-I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I

-regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future

-member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all

-there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that

-Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured

-it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the

-Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.

-

-The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a

-strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen

-from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him

-at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden

-legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was

-smoking it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of

-teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the

-regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own

-gums. He showed it to Dipps.

-

-I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He

-exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured

-out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of

-the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,

-a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express

-purpose of making that stick.

-

-The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had

-another walking-stick at home--made out of the thigh bone of the

-engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to

-carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and

-would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising

-from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler

-in cold weather to warm himself.

-

-Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be

-put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He

-called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the

-centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a

-diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was

-worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic

-shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It had passed into Dipps’s

-hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first

-met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel

-Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say

-anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if

-you’re able.”

-

-Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t

-squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary--it was

-almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a

-companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the

-assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been

-divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,

-and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.

-

-“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom

-Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent

-of the New York _Herald_ Central African tourist pumped that saline

-particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling

-in the interest which it must inspire.”

-

-“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,

-that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic

-treasure?”

-

-“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the

-Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he

-embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley

-_didn’t_ shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.”

-

-

-

-

-MULROONEY.--A TROOPER’S TALE.

-

-

-    We were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;

-    When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;

-    When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades

-    Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.

-    We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;

-    Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung--

-    For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,

-    The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!

-

-    Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;

-    The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;

-    His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;

-    His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.

-    So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,

-    Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;

-    Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try

-    To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.”

-

-    Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,

-    His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;

-    The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,

-    The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;

-    His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command--

-    A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;

-    But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why

-    Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”

-

-    The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led

-    Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;

-    But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,

-    A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!

-    Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair--

-    One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,

-    Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:

-    “By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!”

-

-    But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,

-    There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;

-    The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,

-    As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!

-    One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,

-    A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,

-    And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,

-    A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”

-

-    Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,

-    The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,

-    And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,

-    Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.

-    The captain played his cards with skill--his triumph almost came;

-    But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;

-    And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh

-    Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.

-

-

-FOOTNOTES:

-

-[A] This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish newspapers, was

-debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich comic cartoons in

-_Pat_, the _Weekly News_, the _Weekly Freeman_, and _United Ireland_.

-

-[B] Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the Ribbon or

-Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.

-

-[C] During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the Speaker

-or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside for

-twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the

-course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every

-five minutes or so.

-

-[D] Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester, England, for

-their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy, two Fenian

-leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies being refused

-to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the occasion of a

-demonstration.

-

-[E] On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and Michael

-Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two Fenian

-leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into effect

-it was not believed that the first political execution since that of

-Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old Swan

-Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger

-brought news of the execution instead.

-

-[F] Allen--nineteen years old.

-

-[G] O’Brien--A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s Irish

-Brigade.

-

-[H] Larkin--An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.

-

-[I] At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on Jan.

-23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished themselves

-by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.

-

-[J] In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Ireland. On the

-morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses above was found

-posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of Ireland. The

-poem had previously appeared in an American paper.

-

-[K] A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after he had

-been executed.

-

-[L] Give me a kiss.

-

-[M] Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a British

-jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be

-remembered for years.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-End of Project Gutenberg's An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62180 ***
+
+                         AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
+
+                     SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO
+                            SONG AND STORY.
+
+                                  BY
+                         ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
+
+                                BOSTON:
+           ALFRED MUDGE & SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.
+                                 1891.
+
+
+                              COPYRIGHT,
+                                 1890,
+                        BY ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
+
+
+                                TO THE
+
+                         “FELONS” OF IRELAND,
+
+                      THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,
+
+            WHO HAVE BEEN EXILED OR IMPRISONED OR EXECUTED
+
+            BECAUSE THEY LOVED THEIR NATIVE LAND MORE THAN
+                       HOME OR LIBERTY OR LIFE,
+
+                              This Volume
+
+                      IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+SONGS AND BALLADS.
+
+                                                                    PAGE.
+
+The Church of Ballymore                                                7
+
+The Old Boreen                                                         9
+
+The Irish Schoolhouse                                                 11
+
+Pat Murphy’s Cows                                                     13
+
+Father Tom Malone                                                     16
+
+You Can Guess                                                         18
+
+Only!                                                                 19
+
+Songs of Innisfail                                                    20
+
+The Lord of Kenmare                                                   32
+
+An Old Irish Tune                                                     39
+
+Harvey Duff                                                           45
+
+Ivan Petrokoffsky                                                     52
+
+The Emperor’s Ring                                                    54
+
+Black Loris                                                           56
+
+The Red Heart Daisy                                                   67
+
+The Tide is Turning                                                   68
+
+Our Own Again                                                         70
+
+The Tale of a Tail                                                    71
+
+The Seasick Sub-Commissioners                                         75
+
+Clare Constabulary Caione                                             77
+
+Clause Twenty-six                                                     78
+
+Jenkins, M. P.                                                        80
+
+Thady Malone                                                          81
+
+Rory’s Reverie                                                        83
+
+Our Land Shall be Free                                               102
+
+The Felons of Our Land                                               111
+
+An Official Valuation                                                112
+
+A Bewildered Boycotter                                               113
+
+A Complaint of Coercion                                              115
+
+O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)                                           118
+
+The Fenian’s Dream                                                   119
+
+The Speaker’s Complaint                                              126
+
+Erin Machree                                                         128
+
+Balfour’s Wish                                                       135
+
+Our Cause                                                            136
+
+Served Him Right                                                     138
+
+Rapparee Song                                                        140
+
+To the Landlords of Ireland                                          141
+
+Balfour Rejoices                                                     142
+
+The Irish Brigade                                                    149
+
+Faithful to the Last                                                 156
+
+Fenian Battle Song                                                   158
+
+The Grave of the Martyrs                                             159
+
+Death’s Victory                                                      160
+
+The Green Flag at Fredericksburg                                     161
+
+The Flag of Our Land                                                 162
+
+Hurrah for Liberty                                                   163
+
+The Messenger                                                        165
+
+John Bull’s Appeal                                                   175
+
+The Story of a Bomb                                                  177
+
+Avenging, Though Dim                                                 180
+
+Christmas Dirge of London
+Police                                                               180
+
+Ireland’s Prayer                                                     182
+
+John Bull’s New Year                                                 183
+
+Ready and Steady                                                     185
+
+The Charge of the Guards                                             193
+
+An Address to Slaves                                                 195
+
+The Lion’s Lamentation                                               200
+
+Memorial Ode to Irish Dead                                           202
+
+Song of King Alcohol                                                 209
+
+Contrary Cognomens                                                   210
+
+An Æsthetic Wooing                                                   211
+
+The Drunkard’s Dream                                                 212
+
+Constable X                                                          222
+
+Lucifer’s Laboratory                                                 223
+
+The Monopolist’s Moan                                                224
+
+With the Grand Army Veterans                                         225
+
+The Irish Soldier at Grant’s
+Grave                                                                228
+
+Maine and Mayo                                                       229
+
+The Priest with the Brogue                                           238
+
+Arab War Song                                                        240
+
+The Linguist of the Liffey                                           247
+
+Peggy O’Shea                                                         250
+
+The Boston Carrier’s Plaint                                          253
+
+New England’s Marksmen                                               260
+
+Calcraft and Price                                                   270
+
+Entitled to a Raise                                                  272
+
+The Postman’s Wooing                                                 273
+
+Sonnets to a Shoemaker                                               275
+
+At the College Sports                                                278
+
+Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale                                          286
+
+
+STORIES AND SKETCHES.
+
+Taming a Tiger                                                        22
+
+Ryan’s Revenge                                                        34
+
+Harvey Duff                                                           40
+
+A Seditious Slide                                                     47
+
+Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?                                                58
+
+A Double Surprise                                                     86
+
+Philipson’s Party                                                    103
+
+That Traitor Timmins                                                 129
+
+A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner                                          144
+
+Snooks                                                               151
+
+Caledonian Candlesticks                                              152
+
+A Typical Trial                                                      168
+
+Why Smithers Resigned                                                186
+
+Exploits of an Irish Reporter                                        197
+
+A Political Lesson Spoiled                                           199
+
+An Orange Oration                                                    205
+
+Frederick’s Folly                                                    215
+
+A Sandy Row Skirmish                                                 232
+
+Hobbies in Our Block                                                 241
+
+Not a John L. Sullivan                                               244
+
+A Windy Day at Cabra                                                 248
+
+Apropos of the Census                                                256
+
+A Mixed Antiquarian                                                  261
+
+Jones’s Umbrella                                                     263
+
+Lessons in the French Drama                                          265
+
+A Commercial Crisis                                                  276
+
+A Musical Revenge                                                    280
+
+A Liar Laid Out                                                      282
+
+
+
+
+AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.
+
+
+    I have knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,
+      Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,
+    Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,
+      And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;
+    Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,
+      Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore--
+    They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul
+      Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.
+
+    Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,
+      Though the roof above its worshippers was low,
+    And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,
+      While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!
+    Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s--by the feet of monarchs trod--
+      With their monumental genius and their lore,
+    Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God
+      Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!
+
+    Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue
+      In accents that we might not understand,
+    But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue
+      As to think his words not heaven’s own command!
+    He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,
+      And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door--
+    In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side--
+      God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.
+
+    There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see
+      Each little modest slab and grassy mound;
+    For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,
+      And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!
+    The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,
+      Desolation was about me, sad and sore,
+    So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,
+      But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!
+
+    I am proud of our cathedrals--they are emblems of our love
+      To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;
+    And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,
+      The devil should not have them as his own!
+    Their splendor has inspired me--but amidst it all I prayed
+      God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,
+    Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade
+      Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD BOREEN.
+
+
+    Embroidered with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,
+      Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,
+    The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,
+      The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;
+    The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,
+      The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.
+    Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,
+      For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!
+
+    It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,
+      Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;
+    It laughed with my joy--in my moments of sadness
+      What solace I found in its pitying shade.
+    When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,
+      My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,
+    What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,
+      So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?
+
+    But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,
+      Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,
+    Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,
+      The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;
+    Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,
+      Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;
+    The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,
+      Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.
+
+    A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,
+      The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,
+    As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,
+      I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;
+    And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor
+      The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,
+    Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,
+      My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.
+
+    Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel
+      With sickness and want I have earned only scars;
+    Life’s twilight is nearing--its day disappearing--
+      My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;
+    But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,
+      Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene
+    Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,
+      The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!
+
+
+
+
+AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.
+
+
+    Upon the rugged ladder rungs--whose pinnacle is Fame--
+    How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;
+    The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,
+    And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.
+    To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise
+    Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;
+    Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,
+    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+    When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen
+    Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,
+    We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,
+    But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;
+    Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store
+    Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.
+    No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill
+    In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+    Perhaps--and yet ’tis hard to think--our boastful modern school
+    Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;
+    Would scorn his simple ways--and in the rapid march of mind
+    His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.
+    No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;
+    He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;
+    To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill
+    Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.
+
+    He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs--
+    Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:
+    We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung
+    Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.
+    In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well
+    That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,
+    And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still
+    All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.
+
+    The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;
+    Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;
+    The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;
+    The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.
+    But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,
+    When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,
+    He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,
+    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+
+
+
+PAT MURPHY’S COWS.
+
+     [In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary
+     Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to
+     the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited
+     roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat
+     Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less
+     than eleven children.]
+
+
+    In a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,
+    There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;
+    From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,
+    With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.
+    He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,
+    And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;
+    While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse
+    Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole--a pair of Kerry cows.
+
+    Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose
+    The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,
+    Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,
+    And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.
+    And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,
+    For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;
+    In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;
+    He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.
+
+    And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,
+    Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;
+    His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair--
+    The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,
+    Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,
+    Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;
+    And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows
+    Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.
+
+    Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,
+    How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!
+    A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,
+    And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.
+    What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,
+    As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,
+    He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,
+    For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.
+
+    Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan--
+    He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;
+    He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,
+    And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.
+    Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,
+    And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:
+    They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,
+    But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
+
+
+
+
+FATHER TOM MALONE.
+
+A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.
+
+
+    Hair white as innocence, that crowned
+    A gentle face which never frowned;
+    Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;
+    Lips framed to counsel and to bless;
+    Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,
+    A reflex of our native skies,
+    Through which now tears, now sunshine shone--
+    There you have Father Tom Malone.
+
+    He bade the infant at its birth
+    _Cead mille failthe_ to the earth;
+    With friendly hand he guided youth
+    Along the thorny track of truth;
+    The dying felt, yet knew not why,
+    Nearer to Heaven when he was by--
+    For, sure, the angels at God’s throne
+    Were friends of Father Tom Malone.
+
+    For us, poor simple sons of toil
+    Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,
+    Our one ambition, sole content,
+    Not to be backward with the rent;
+    Our one absorbing, constant fear,
+    The agent’s visits twice a year;
+    We had, our hardships to atone,
+    The love of Father Tom Malone.
+
+    One season failed. The dull earth slept.
+    Despite of ceaseless vigil kept
+    For sign of crop, day after day,
+    To coax it from the sullen clay,
+    Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;
+    The tubers rotted--then, oh, shame!
+    We--’twas the last time ever known--
+    Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.
+
+    We had, from fruitful years before,
+    Garnered with care a frugal store;
+    ’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone
+    What were our babes to live upon?
+    We had no seed for coming spring,
+    Nor faintest hope to which to cling;
+    We would have starved without a moan,
+    When out spoke Father Tom Malone.
+
+    His voice, so flute-like in the past,
+    Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,
+    His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,
+    Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!
+    “God’s wondrous love doth not intend
+    Hundreds to starve that one may spend;
+    Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”
+    _That_ from mild Father Tom Malone.
+
+    And when the landlord with a force
+    Of English soldiers, foot and horse,
+    Came down and direst vengeance swore,
+    Who met him at the cabin door?
+    Who reasoned first and then defied
+    The thief in all his power and pride?
+    Who won the poor man’s fight alone?
+    Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.
+
+    So, when you point to heroes’ scars,
+    And boast their prowess in the wars,
+    Give one small meed of praise, at least,
+    To this poor modest Irish priest.
+    No laurel wreath was twined for him,
+    But pulses throb and eyelids dim
+    When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,
+    God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
+
+
+
+
+YOU CAN GUESS.
+
+
+    There are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,
+    And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,
+    And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find
+    Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;
+    But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,
+    Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,
+    There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess
+    I first met my fate,--what it was you can guess.
+
+    It was under the shade of its bordering trees,
+    One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees
+    At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,
+    And yet it was but a short question to ask.
+    ’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless
+    The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”
+    And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;
+    And the question was this--but I’m sure you can guess.
+
+
+
+
+ONLY!
+
+
+    Only a cabin, thatched and gray,
+      Only a rose-twined door,
+    Only a barefooted child at play
+      On only an earthern floor.
+    Only a little brain--not wise
+      For even a head so small,
+    And that is the reason he bitterly cries
+      For leaving his home--that’s all.
+
+    Only the thought of her girlhood there,
+      And her happier days as wife,
+    In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,
+      Have endeared them to her for life;
+    What is the weeping woman’s cause?
+      Why are her accents gall?
+    What does she know of our intricate laws?
+      It was only a hut--that’s all.
+
+    He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,
+      That man with the eyelids dim,
+    And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth
+      For sinewy serfs like him.
+    Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,
+      For his heart such a wondrous thrall?
+    Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?
+      He was born in the place--that’s all.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The years have gone, and the worn-out pair
+      Sleep under the stranger’s clay,
+    And the weeping child with the curly hair
+      Is a brave, strong man to-day;
+    Yet still he thinks of the olden land,
+      And prays for her tyrant’s fall,
+    And longs to be one of some chosen band,
+      With only a chance--that’s all.
+
+
+
+
+SONGS OF INNISFAIL.
+
+
+    Where the Austral river rushes
+    Through feathery heath and bushes,
+    Through its gurgles and its gushes
+        You may hear,
+    To your wonder and surprise,
+    Sweet melodies arise
+    You have heard ’neath other skies
+        Low and clear.
+    Yes! within the gold land,
+    Strange to you and cold land,
+    Voices from the old land
+        Swell upon the gale--
+    Lyrics of the story,
+    Lit with flames of glory,
+    Dimmed with pages gory,
+        Songs of Innisfail!
+
+    Where Mississippi leaping
+    O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping
+    Through valleys fair, is sweeping
+        To the sea,
+    From the fields of nodding grain
+    On some mountain path or plain
+    Rings a stirring old refrain
+        Fresh and free.
+    Yes! where’er we wander
+    Irish hearts will ponder
+    O’er our land, and fonder
+        Throb with ev’ry tale
+    Of the home that bore us,
+    Till the new skies o’er us
+    Echo with our chorus
+        Songs of Innisfail.
+
+    Exiles o’er the spray-foam,
+    Whereso’er we may roam,
+    Thoughts of far-away home
+        Linger still,
+    And in dreams we see again
+    Babbling stream and silent glen,
+    Forest green and lonely fen,
+        Vale and hill.
+    Yes! our hearts’ devotion
+    Flies across the ocean,
+    While with deep emotion
+        Sternest features pale,
+    As around us stealing,
+    Softened by sad feeling,
+    Through the air are pealing
+        Songs of Innisfail!
+
+
+
+
+TAMING A TIGER.
+
+
+We were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,
+Dublin,--five of us--a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.
+
+There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the
+representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay
+amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,
+who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & Brassey; Tim
+Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing
+stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a
+distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical
+jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome
+kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 A.M. train
+south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance
+of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was
+attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid
+individual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally
+irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.
+
+“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the
+newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way
+from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks
+we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would
+ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a
+little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him
+out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of
+the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take
+whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me
+see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick
+Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this
+Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and
+Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each
+of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,
+and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,
+will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he
+must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my
+sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What
+do you say, boys?”
+
+Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand
+in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the
+major into a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed
+rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the
+compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in
+Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping
+Harry,--delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble
+servant).
+
+At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all
+manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished
+off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to
+the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,
+swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had
+pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout
+to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe
+Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,
+and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.
+
+He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!
+the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now
+the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.
+
+He had killed a panther with his naked hands--with one naked hand, in
+fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in
+desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its
+tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s
+spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and
+he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior
+recesses. He tore its heart out, sir,--its heart,--and an assortment of
+lungs and ribs and other things.
+
+He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello
+crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his
+waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He
+never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.
+
+At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,
+and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we
+managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in
+Ireland.
+
+“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that--down
+in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a
+fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled
+twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized
+atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing
+dumb, my name’s not Boomerang--Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”
+
+“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the
+peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,
+for instance.”
+
+“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach
+of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,--flay him alive,
+sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember
+Joe Boomerang--fighting Joe--as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild
+elephants! I would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,
+the--the--by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”
+
+Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,
+and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am
+the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your
+abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally
+concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I
+suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will
+oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an
+officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you
+have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”
+
+We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform
+and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like
+an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but
+his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I
+cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D---- me, if I will!”
+
+“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not
+a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with
+perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for
+you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with
+pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him
+in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the
+bullet? People said, you know, that it was the doctors and not Davitt
+that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.
+
+The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man
+in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man
+already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not
+going to be killed--I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not
+going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as
+if they were snipe.”
+
+“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of
+the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith
+did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting
+Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively
+blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for
+the honor of the service.”
+
+“The service be d----d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a
+kaleidoscope of colors--red, purple, blue, yellow, and white--were
+flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like
+this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a
+different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his
+courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead
+of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had
+ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,
+sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them
+that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance
+from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and
+winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar
+and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;
+and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb
+from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”
+
+Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,
+and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a
+cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.
+I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I
+shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that
+I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you
+must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you
+to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The
+prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had
+disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.
+Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone
+got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed
+to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”
+
+“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,
+he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he
+has always chosen that so far.”
+
+“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such
+horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing
+outright.
+
+“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”
+
+“Has he--has he--I’m not afraid, you know--ha! ha! Joe Boomerang
+afraid--capital joke--but--but--has he killed anybody?”
+
+“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him
+personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,
+matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The
+major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I
+continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both
+pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.
+You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It
+will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,
+but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere
+with my duty.”
+
+“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that--that--”
+
+“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the
+best. I know an undertaker in Cork--a decent sort of a chap. We can
+arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the
+first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills
+you.”
+
+“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me
+sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what
+alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I
+remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major
+managed to get hold of enough of his voice to inquire how it came to
+pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as
+duelling.
+
+“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western
+institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in
+deference to Yankee ideas.”
+
+“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we
+would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang
+of--”
+
+“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the
+car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife
+clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish
+determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter
+collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.
+“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot
+that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and
+glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of
+America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to
+the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m
+bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the
+Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I
+squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the
+blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,
+sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a
+Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the snub-nosed,
+curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.
+Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena
+from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge
+forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that
+seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made
+a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,
+but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.
+
+When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told
+him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,
+having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed
+staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered
+that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for
+his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at
+the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to
+Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.
+
+“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that
+gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to
+Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him
+this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he
+booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’
+thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since
+the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at
+the ould cross roads.” A few days after I read this announcement in the
+Dublin _Gazette_: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the
+humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident
+magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly
+return to Bengal.”
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF KENMARE.
+
+
+    There are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;
+      The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,
+    When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,
+      Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.
+    What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,
+      What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,
+    On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,
+      That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!
+
+    Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning
+      The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,
+    While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,
+      Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,
+    Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow
+      Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;
+    Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,
+      But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!
+
+    When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;
+      When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,
+    For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county
+      Were--the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.
+    And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,
+      Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,
+    The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,
+      Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.
+
+    Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster--
+      This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,
+    Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master--
+      A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!
+    He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;
+      He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer
+    That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges
+      Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!
+
+    He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,
+      Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,
+    But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil
+      Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.
+    Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,
+      The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,
+    And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”
+      Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.
+
+    Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;
+      Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;
+    The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally
+      Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.
+    Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,
+      Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,
+    Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,
+      The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
+
+
+
+
+RYAN’S REVENGE.
+
+
+During the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most
+exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement
+articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the
+post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,
+for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect
+“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This
+peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional
+association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was
+popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been
+introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain
+refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,
+Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the
+government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the
+indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions
+that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,
+subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to adopt his invention when they
+had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the
+_status quo_ was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,
+English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his
+reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office
+pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that
+nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.
+
+The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that
+Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical
+visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence
+in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of
+his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted
+county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a
+Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than
+turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof
+that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.
+So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.
+
+For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to
+get muddled,--his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the
+spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented _billet-doux_ from
+that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue
+envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna
+to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an
+envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes
+being found to contain nothing at all.
+
+Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with
+the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy
+for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent
+sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that
+euphonious cognomen.
+
+Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state
+indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw
+a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You
+couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.
+If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or
+individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was
+a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the
+shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy
+for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress
+suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good
+harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were
+thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of
+as a blight among the Murphys.
+
+So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed
+to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,
+it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,
+the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.
+
+But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central
+bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his
+confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy
+in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the
+fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went
+forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many
+letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could
+put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,--the crops, the
+weather, the price of provisions,--anything, in fact, or nothing at all.
+The language was of minor importance,--Irish, however, preferred,--and
+the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the
+cause.
+
+Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.
+
+The first day of the interception of _the_ Murphy’s letters, three bags
+full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.
+
+The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.
+
+The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s
+private sanctum with spare bags.
+
+The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.
+
+The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy
+letters on the stairs.
+
+Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.
+
+But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking
+Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters
+for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.
+
+Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the
+grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to
+the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or
+hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the
+general chaos.
+
+The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service
+Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were
+blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs
+and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated
+protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for
+Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.
+
+Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War
+Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey
+quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the
+intercepted epistles in.
+
+Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,--the order to
+overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would
+have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the
+task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was
+relieved.
+
+Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy
+correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed
+to the treacherous waves.
+
+To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up
+a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir
+William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a
+week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the
+gout.
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD IRISH TUNE.
+
+
+    We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,
+    And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay
+    By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood
+    A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.
+    Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,
+    And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,
+    When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,
+    There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.
+
+    It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,
+    It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,
+    And over the dreams of the slumberers cast
+    The magical spell of a voice from the past;
+    It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain
+    Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;
+    And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,
+    Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.
+
+    Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,
+    Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,
+    Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,
+    For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.
+    Once again in old homes we were children at play,
+    Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.
+    Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,
+    And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.
+
+    A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,
+    To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,
+    And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,
+    Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;
+    A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,
+    But never a ball on its death-mission sped;
+    Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon
+    Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!
+
+    It linked with its strains ere they melted away
+    True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,
+    But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,
+    To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.
+    The air seemed to throb with invisible tears
+    Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,
+    And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,
+    Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
+
+
+
+
+“HARVEY DUFF.”
+
+
+There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible
+to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the
+different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes
+or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
+“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;
+“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment
+before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
+will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the
+living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself
+a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles
+of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five
+minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because
+he has been killed in the lump.
+
+But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers
+existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is
+none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced
+upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished
+in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican
+convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a
+trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling
+outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but
+if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain
+tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,
+dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,
+hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take
+a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of
+mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will
+amply repay the journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be
+anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well
+to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest
+you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky
+enough to go to hospital.
+
+Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The
+performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.
+
+How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its
+composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated
+with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the
+authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories
+and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.
+
+I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”
+
+There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server
+and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular
+“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled
+in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place
+as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally
+difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the
+melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has
+been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to
+submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied
+experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”
+for thirty seconds.
+
+I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told
+that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,
+returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor
+jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious
+to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time
+to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the
+back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a
+knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the
+harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in
+the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.
+
+In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed
+little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an
+escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,
+and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the
+aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small
+and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle
+something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before
+the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s
+Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and
+bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,
+without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old
+rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen
+might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their
+mouths and their souls in their boots,--that is, if an Irish policeman
+has either a heart or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard
+both along with their civilian clothes.[A]
+
+A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the
+dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic
+entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him
+in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He
+was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer
+was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were
+attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,
+pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man
+aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the
+atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to
+capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.
+Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst
+penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade
+of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that
+strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”
+and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an
+avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told
+Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the
+passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the
+ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,
+twirling and twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon
+the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the
+atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when
+the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the
+crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering
+at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he
+could recover his breath.
+
+I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its
+obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the
+ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and
+it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines
+to that immaculate body:--
+
+
+“HARVEY DUFF.”
+
+    My load of woes is hard to bear,
+    I’m losing flesh with dark despair,
+    And the top of my head is so awfully bare
+    It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.
+    Would you the cause be after knowing
+    That makes me the baldest peeler going,
+    That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?
+    ’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        If I’ve not heard you often enough,
+        May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,
+        And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+    I was once with a bailiff serving writs,
+    My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,
+    For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,
+    And the mob malafoostered me for him.
+    But the case that circles my brain is thick,
+    It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,
+    And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough
+    Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,
+        My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff
+        Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”
+
+    When duty has called me miles away,
+    Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,
+    And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex
+    Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.
+    I couldn’t coax dry bread and water
+    From father or son, from mother or daughter,
+    But I always could reckon on more than enough
+    Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        Of you I get more than _quantum suff_,
+        And would to the Lord I could collar the muff
+        Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”
+
+    I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care
+    To go alone to rebel Clare,
+    And with a reckless spirit dare
+    To take a farm that’s vacant there.
+    I know the peasants bold would scatter
+    My four bones to the wind--no matter;
+    They’d wake me decent--no heart so tough
+    As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,
+        As I think that my soul will depart in a huff
+        To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+
+
+
+A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.
+
+
+We learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and
+Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy
+has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have
+been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot
+of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged
+Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly
+thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts
+on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at
+present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:--
+
+There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and
+happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.
+
+I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings
+in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never
+did anything so low or ignoble as to _work_ for their country, and are,
+consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big
+pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the
+refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by
+jingo when we do!”
+
+On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and
+unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the
+heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty
+miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing
+triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the
+Milky Way.
+
+Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of
+an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few
+front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.
+
+I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty
+feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous
+juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving
+that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t
+have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of
+Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to
+either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been
+organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a
+National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through
+my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.
+
+But it is strange how the misfortunes of others reconcile us to our
+own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my
+soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw
+approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair
+Araminta Higgins.
+
+They were mashing.
+
+He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,
+preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his
+suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,
+and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.
+
+“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true
+to thee as--as--as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.
+I am thine--thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”
+
+At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet
+and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward
+a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane
+observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he
+supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish
+blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a
+coarse laugh.
+
+They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign
+spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two
+prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the
+direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were
+energetically discussing the National League campaign in Ulster. They
+neared the precipice--I mean the slide.
+
+“This Parnellite invasion will fail--utterly fail--if we remain firm,”
+said the taller of the two, Col. K--H--. “Unity and perseverance must be
+our watchwords. United we stand--”
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head
+rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his
+desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the
+soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted
+energies.
+
+The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known
+attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to
+discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.
+looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in
+every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were
+veritable embodiments of _fieri-facias_; his stiff, angular collar had
+the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he
+carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and
+processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping
+briskly to destruction.
+
+Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a
+bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.
+
+They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that
+atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.
+
+Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal
+documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored
+ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got
+home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking
+for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a
+bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was
+filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.
+
+When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was
+continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the
+North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his
+reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done
+the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”
+
+And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was
+brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the
+policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault
+over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly
+round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the
+policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had
+got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had
+been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and
+constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.
+
+But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we
+going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls
+and chasms to be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,
+and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?
+It’s awful!
+
+
+
+
+IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.
+
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
+      Of the Army of the Danube, is a private--nothing more;
+    And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision
+      On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.
+    He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,
+      And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;
+    So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding
+      Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.
+    But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,
+      Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;
+    And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,
+      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted--
+      His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place--
+    And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,
+      No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.
+    It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,
+      When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,
+    When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,
+      And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.
+    There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village
+      (So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),
+    When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,
+      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
+      Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,
+    For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion
+      He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.
+    In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,
+      By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,
+    And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory
+      Of dying for his country to be happy or content.
+    He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,
+      And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,
+    While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,
+      Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPEROR’S RING.
+
+
+    The stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,
+      The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;
+    The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;
+      Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;
+    When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder
+      Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,
+    Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,
+      The sentinel checks his monotonous round.
+    Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber
+      With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,
+    For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,
+      The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    Fresh horse and new pistols--some phrases of warning,
+      Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,
+    And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning
+      Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.
+    Out, out through the forests--on, on o’er the meadows,
+      While castle and cabin and hamlet and town
+    Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.
+      With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,
+    The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;
+      To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;
+    And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver
+      The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,
+      All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;
+    And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;
+      Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,
+    For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,
+      Nor ocean a sheltering island so far
+    As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,
+      Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.
+    So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker
+      Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.
+    Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor
+      Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    We Russians are brave, but we only are human;
+      We cower at a power it is death to offend,
+    Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman
+      From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.
+    The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;
+      Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;
+    The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder
+      Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.
+    Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,
+      These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.
+    And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only
+      A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK LORIS.
+
+
+    Spurs jingle and lances shine;
+    A hundred brave horsemen in line;
+      Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,
+    For why should true hearts repine?
+    The pathway is level and balmy the air,
+    Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;
+    The sun has but reached its meridian height,
+    “Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”
+    When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,
+    Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;
+    In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,
+    And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.
+    But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,
+    With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,
+        Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!
+
+    Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!
+    Ten heroes fight back to back,
+      And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust
+    A wolf from the howling pack.
+    How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!
+    Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,
+    They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,
+    Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.
+    The ten are scattered; they seem to be
+    Like derelict spars in an angry sea.
+    But never a Cossack was known to yield
+    While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.
+    Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,
+    The waves are engulphing them one by one!
+        But two remain back to back!
+
+    His comrade sinks down with a groan--
+    Black Loris is fighting alone,
+      His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,
+    And his arms as heavy as stone.
+    “Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,
+    For answer he sabres the chief of the band.
+    But his arm is shivered in twain--he feels
+    The earth swim round him--he gasps, he reels,
+    And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,
+    As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar--
+    Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?
+    No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!
+        Black Loris is not alone!
+
+    No tears for the ninety-nine,
+    The nation’s heart is their shrine;
+      But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise
+    For the one man left of the line!
+    The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,
+    And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,
+    The strength and glory of Russia depart,
+    And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,
+    Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell
+    Of dashing Loris who fought so well,
+    Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,
+    Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.
+    And for years to come, when trotting along
+    Ural and Don, men will sing this song--
+        “The One and the Ninety-Nine!”
+
+
+
+
+WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Phineas Phlynn, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish
+estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic
+nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous
+functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and
+less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by
+his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the
+abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to
+his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his
+neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy
+man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was
+only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed
+property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits
+included an addiction to French wines and Irish whiskey, a decided
+inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures
+at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into
+frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger
+percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.
+
+But how was it to be done?
+
+He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry
+had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in
+mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and
+the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land
+League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master
+about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he
+described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his
+gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious
+bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks
+deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But
+the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.
+Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a
+repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have
+their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console
+Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his
+fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t
+enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant
+degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent
+to guess that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal
+forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a
+crisis. There should be an outrage--a sanguinary, blood-curdling
+outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent
+carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least
+eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual
+peril.
+
+
+II.
+
+There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion
+of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself--at least, he shot his
+own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this
+horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact
+that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s
+hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was
+in it or not--really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so
+tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly
+inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such
+objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat
+on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police
+barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and
+the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his
+dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his
+revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence
+of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforementioned, and poured
+into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of
+his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had
+fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his
+head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!
+
+
+III.
+
+The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country
+was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The
+revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.
+The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the
+government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized
+community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages
+of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information
+that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an
+exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively
+kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes--a feat
+unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir
+and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown
+had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For
+nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it
+was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their
+emotions.
+
+All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence
+given to him as the employer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,
+that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to
+get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would
+become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition
+permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his
+outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London
+detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the
+event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,
+Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,
+Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine
+bargains, left London for Leitrim.
+
+In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with
+the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of
+the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same
+neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.
+
+
+IV.
+
+In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he
+could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work
+of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.
+
+About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident
+that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because
+every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been
+arrested, and established their innocence. The foreigner who had failed
+would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents
+loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.
+
+It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced
+that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking
+measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector
+Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest
+both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names
+of Jones and Brennan.
+
+
+V.
+
+Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.
+
+“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at
+you.”
+
+“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong
+reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.
+
+“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”
+
+“Where is he?” queried Phineas.
+
+“Here.”
+
+“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for
+revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,
+when, why, how--”
+
+“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am
+Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been
+commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business. I’ve fished. I
+may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant
+for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and
+whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and
+at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police
+there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve
+trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare--I have him,
+I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”
+
+Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins
+departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the
+unconscious Crawley.
+
+
+VI.
+
+“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant
+for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas
+Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no
+time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant
+Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in
+accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in
+Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and
+about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of
+Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a
+tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,
+too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.
+If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”
+
+“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head
+Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the
+Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,
+if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I
+whistled for them.”
+
+It was so arranged.
+
+Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,
+describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three
+official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened
+and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep
+consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to
+himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding
+the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand
+and the warrant fluttering in his left.
+
+“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he
+ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at
+him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables
+grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a
+racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip
+off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and
+depositing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a
+shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire
+with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to
+receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by
+Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was
+carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells
+and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers
+charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they
+splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred
+skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the
+hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned
+each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms
+and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their
+Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.
+Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among
+the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the
+entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal
+production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully
+unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian
+crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s
+hat.
+
+
+
+
+THE RED-HEART DAISY.
+
+A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.
+
+
+    The clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;
+        The storm of wrath
+    Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,
+        And in its path
+    Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces
+    In quivering bodies and distorted faces.
+
+    Among the bloody drift of dead and dying
+        That strewed the ground,
+    A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,
+        The searchers found.
+    Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,
+    Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.
+
+    Some essence from the forms interred together
+        Enriched the clay,
+    And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather
+        ’Neath which they lay--
+    Rough hide and dainty skin--deep brain and hollow--
+    Silver and iron--Vulcan and Apollo.
+
+    And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled
+        The mountain’s crest,
+    Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled
+        Among the rest,
+    Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory
+    Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Those who would make our land a frame of metal,
+        With jewelled heart,
+    Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal
+        As thing apart
+    From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,
+    Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.
+
+
+
+
+THE TIDE IS TURNING.
+
+
+    So, masters who have ruled so long
+      With cruel rods of iron,
+    Who sought with gyves and fetters strong
+      Our freedom to environ,
+    In plenitude of sullen power
+      Our tearful pleadings spurning:
+    Prepare ye for your fated hour,
+      Beware--the tide is turning!
+          Yes! yes! at last we fling the past
+            With all its woes behind us,
+          And stand to-day in firm array
+            Against the bonds that bind us.
+
+    With brutal grip of tyrant hand
+      Ye choked our aspirations,
+    And made our fertile motherland
+      The Niobe of nations;
+    To feed the vices of your lords,
+      Ye stole the people’s earning,
+    And held the theft with hireling swords--
+      But now the tide is turning!
+          Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway
+            Is tottering to ruin,
+          The Irish race a future face
+            That will not harbor you in!
+
+    Ye kept us chained to ignorance,
+      In fear that education
+    Might teach our brains the wisest chance
+      To liberate the nation.
+    But, spite of all your guile and thrall,
+      Our people still are learning
+    What most will tend your yoke to rend,
+      And so the tide is turning.
+          Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,
+            Each rusty chain is breaking;
+          The portents smile upon our isle,
+            For Ireland is awaking.
+
+    From meadows rich of smooth Kildare
+      To frowning crags of Kerry,
+    From ocean-girdled shores of Clare
+      To busy marts of Derry,
+    In our opprest, north, south, east, west,
+      A newer spirit’s burning--
+    The conquering fire of brave desire,
+      That tells the tide is turning.
+          Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark
+            The light at last is blazing,
+          Till on our brow no serf-brand now
+            Can chill a friendly gazing.
+
+
+
+
+OUR OWN AGAIN.
+
+
+    The voice of freedom’s sounding
+      From farthest shore to shore;
+    And Erin’s pulse is bounding
+      With manhood’s blood once more;
+    Our sluggard trance is broken,
+      We stand erect as men,
+    Our stern demand is spoken,
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    No futile bribes can stay us,
+      No traitor chiefs control,
+    No wheedling tones delay us,
+      No terrors blanch our soul.
+    The gloomy hour has vanished
+      And gone forever when
+    We could be crushed or banished--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    The bluster of the Tories,
+      And Whigdom’s tempting lies,
+    Are vain and foolish stories
+      We spurn and we despise.
+    We’ve torn the landlord foeman
+      From out his reeking den,
+    And now we’ll halt for no man--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    Our eyes are lifted sunward,
+      No power can bar our course,
+    Our march must still be onward,
+      Spite either guile or force;
+    And be it by the sabre,
+      The voice, the vote, or pen,
+    Or steadfast, patient labor--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF A TAIL.
+
+
+    There’s a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,
+    Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;
+    Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,
+    For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;
+    ’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July
+    Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;
+    And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,
+    That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.
+
+    Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,
+    Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,
+    And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon
+    Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.
+    And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,
+    He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,
+    Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,
+    Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.
+
+    ’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round
+    Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,
+    And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,
+    In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;
+    And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,
+    The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,
+    But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,
+    For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.
+
+    When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,
+    She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;
+    And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,
+    With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.
+    Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind
+    That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.
+    Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,
+    That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.
+
+    Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,
+    And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,
+    Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then
+    That the time for speech was past--the knife was mightier than the pen.
+    They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,
+    And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,
+    To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,
+    But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.
+
+    When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone
+    Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.
+    The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,
+    As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.
+    Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,
+    But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,
+    That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,
+    And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.
+
+    And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,
+    Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;
+    She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)
+    Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;
+    And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,
+    And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,
+    That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,
+    Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.
+
+    And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,
+    That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;
+    And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her
+    Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.”
+    Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,
+    The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;
+    They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,
+    Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.
+
+     [In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during
+     the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of
+     the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on
+     the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,
+     in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island
+     was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for
+     over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land
+     Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?
+     Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.
+     The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible
+     to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses
+     record the exploit:]
+
+
+    There were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,
+    With due responsibility on each official breast,
+    To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent
+    To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.
+    Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,
+    It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,
+    Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,
+    For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.
+
+    They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults
+    As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,
+    And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,
+    They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.
+    The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,
+    Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,
+    They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact
+    That their unexpected _dejeuner_ was owing to the Act.
+
+    They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,
+    There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,
+    And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,
+    They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,
+    And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport
+    That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;
+    They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked
+    The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.
+
+    They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay
+    While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,
+    Although alternate intervals were taken to allow
+    Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.
+    That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal
+    A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;
+    And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,
+    They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.
+
+
+
+
+CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.
+
+
+    So, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!
+      An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,
+    Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do
+      Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?
+    All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’
+      An’ existence will become a dreary void;
+    Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;
+      Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke
+      Shall we revel in our customary fun
+    Of scaring all the humble women folk
+      In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.
+    There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,
+      An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;
+    We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected
+      To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,
+      ’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,
+    An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire--
+      We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,
+    The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,
+      An’ life by common people be enjoyed,
+    In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint
+      That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.
+      But we didn’t think you positively cruel
+    Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,
+      And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.
+    Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,
+      Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,
+    We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’
+      Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!
+
+
+
+
+CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.
+
+(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)
+
+
+    I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,
+      For struggling poor sowls like myself,
+    To brighten our dreary existence,
+      An’ even to gather some pelf,
+    In a land where the soil is but waitin’
+      The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks
+    That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’
+      To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried
+      Away from the strings of my life--
+    From the spot where my mother lies buried,
+      The place where I coorted my wife.
+    Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,
+      My conscience remorsefully pricks--
+    I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,
+      Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,
+      When my luck like a stranger goes by,
+    When blight settles down on the praties,
+      An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;
+    Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,
+      An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,
+    I curse you, misfortune so cruel,
+      An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,
+      Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;
+    Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,
+      An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,
+    Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,
+      An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks--
+    Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’
+      That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    And often at night I’ve a notion,
+      Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,
+    In that plintiful land o’er the ocean
+      They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;
+    They might even an odd pat of butther
+      Along with their stirabout mix;
+    Oh, my heart is too full for to utter
+      Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    To see the health-roses assimble
+      On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls
+    Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble
+      With the innocent laugh of my girls;
+    An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,
+      Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.
+    Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy
+      Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.
+
+
+
+
+JENKINS, M. P.
+
+
+    Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er
+    To address the electors he’d soothered before,
+    But he found in their feelings toward him a change,
+    Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;
+    He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south
+    When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,
+    And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,
+    For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;
+    Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”
+    A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;
+    “I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.”
+    They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,
+    “The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”
+    He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,
+    “For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;
+    He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,
+    And as it was freezing it needn’t be told
+    That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.
+    And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind--
+    Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,
+    And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,
+    “I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,
+    Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.
+    “Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,
+    “Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”
+    All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;
+    “I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.
+    ’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;
+    I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.
+
+
+
+
+THADY MALONE.
+
+
+    Hurrah for our tight little, bright little nation,
+      The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;
+    The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,
+      Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.
+              Were once we united
+              Our wrongs should be righted
+    And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,
+              But still some intraygur,
+              Or bastely renayger,
+    Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.
+              Yet, no matter, we’ve planned
+              A divarsion so grand
+    That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;
+              And the rogue who’ll consent
+              To contribute rack rint
+    Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!
+
+    The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,
+      The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,
+    An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,
+      The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,
+              For his wife wint away
+              On the very next day
+    With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),
+              An’ sisters and cousins
+              Departed in dozens,
+    Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.
+              Why, sorra a doubt,
+              Sure, the fire it wint out
+    An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,
+              Till he felt that the rint
+              Had been badly ill-spint
+    That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!
+
+    The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,
+      The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,
+    In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,
+      An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.
+              The sparrows, diminted,
+              Grew quite discontinted,
+    An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;
+              The pigs tuk to fittin’,
+              An’ hins that were sittin’
+    Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.
+              A polis inspector,
+              A taxes collector,
+    Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,
+              An’ there now he’s stuck,
+              Without hope, grace, or luck,
+    Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!
+
+
+
+[B] RORY’S REVERIE.
+
+
+    Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand
+    To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,
+    To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,
+    To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.
+    ’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,
+    Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;
+    My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,
+    Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!
+
+    How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,
+    Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,
+    Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,
+    Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!
+    An’ they must know--the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,
+    That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.
+    Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight--
+    I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!
+
+    Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,--
+    (“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging
+          hotly round),--
+    And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face
+    Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.
+    She kissed me ere she sank to rest--I’d think it sin just now
+    To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;
+    Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight--
+    I mustn’t think of this--No! no! for Rory walks to-night!
+
+    Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,
+    I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.
+    The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long--
+    Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.
+    And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,
+    When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,
+    An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,
+    An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”
+
+    And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;
+    If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;
+    My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;
+    My child--but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!
+    She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when
+    She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:
+    Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,
+    To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!
+
+    What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer
+    For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;
+    I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,
+    No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!
+    I’m shakin’ like an aspen--Faugh! I can’t afford to spend
+    My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end--
+    What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,
+    I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE SURPRISE.
+
+
+I.
+
+GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.
+
+Constable Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the
+Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail
+to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable
+Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was
+tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,
+and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution
+which has deprived the Irish constabulary of all the ordinary feelings
+of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a
+riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a
+recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was
+born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was
+evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in
+dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested
+suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar
+to his code of instructions and mode of training--these were mysteries
+known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The
+physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own
+limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry
+McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the
+metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the
+somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in
+the parish who disputed unpopularity with him--George Macgrabb, J. P.,
+the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of
+its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles
+around.
+
+Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two
+despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral--or
+immoral--characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the
+recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to
+the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,
+that the chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question
+about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,
+which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to
+direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were
+supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save
+Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police
+were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the
+constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.
+Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his
+magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest
+in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he
+had sent to Gallagher a goose.
+
+“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate
+feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to
+rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.
+Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your
+comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”
+
+Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and
+miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,
+or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the
+gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship
+are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried
+to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of
+a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of half-a-dozen
+agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make
+his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But
+the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The
+compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin _Farmer’s Gazette_ recommended
+boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his
+own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged
+Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.
+The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he
+could recover from this outrage to his judgment.
+
+The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the _Barndoor
+Chronicle_ gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert
+Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of
+edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight
+spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.
+He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the
+kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in
+Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and
+culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be
+fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,
+half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official _Gazette_, tunic
+buttons, bayonet sheaths--anything, everything, except flesh-forming
+food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private
+circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,
+search-warrants, copies of information, it swallowed with an avidity
+that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.
+
+I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a
+knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that
+wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be
+necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that
+transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.
+
+
+II.
+
+A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.
+
+The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable
+Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.
+They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,
+and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant
+farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated
+Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,
+madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never
+doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and
+propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British
+justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary
+joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and
+your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who
+is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great
+measure to his powers of mimicry, and the fact that Macgrabb and
+Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At
+weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again
+and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the
+magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the
+greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried
+in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would
+have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s
+charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at
+finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue
+and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous
+countenance.
+
+As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s
+father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the
+parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either
+the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the
+sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not
+account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a
+two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and
+in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb
+could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s
+Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less
+expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,
+guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to
+contribute, but he could and did express his opinion of the
+rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis
+was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of
+the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within
+measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s
+collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had
+begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the
+universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left
+McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his
+difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered
+the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.
+
+I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This
+reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.
+Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,
+frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the
+opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of
+his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in
+his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the
+fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a
+devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he
+couldn’t quite understand it himself.
+
+It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly
+disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical
+susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and
+Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and
+with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a
+knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical
+studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a
+grass plot, and out into the high road.
+
+It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose
+of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the
+peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.
+
+“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand
+familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper
+escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch
+McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”
+
+“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.
+
+“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been
+engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents
+are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and
+you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents--you’re not
+supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t
+nab that rent receipt--you’ll know it--it’s on blue, thick paper--what
+harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police
+authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing
+else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down
+for you, and the chance, Tom--think of that, my boy--the chance of
+having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood
+out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party
+last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you
+think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,
+gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till
+the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with
+delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”
+
+“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers
+and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a
+rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies
+of the _Irish World_, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,
+even if I lose my stripes.”
+
+On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a
+loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the
+summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and
+Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.
+
+“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he
+yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my
+oath--I mane this sarch-warrant--I demand any arms, ammunition,
+traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”
+
+McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to
+his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,
+“Arrah! Sergeant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of
+these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,
+yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have
+such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”
+
+The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his
+followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or
+scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,
+and the merciless jeering of the young student.
+
+On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.
+If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there
+is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”
+
+That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat
+down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the
+search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged
+in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the
+table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring
+in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened
+by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and
+perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was
+the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the
+omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers
+strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,
+but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and
+disappeared from view.
+
+
+III.
+
+A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+About noon the constable received the following note:--
+
+     _Sir_,--Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your
+     grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for
+     £24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George
+     Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take
+     legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your
+     punishment. Yours, etc., PATRICK MCCARTHY.
+
+The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:--
+
+     MR. MCCARTHY:
+
+     _Sir_,--I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to
+     the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few
+     suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin
+     Castle.
+
+                                               Yours, THOMAS GALLAGHER,
+                                                  _Constable, R. I. C._
+
+
+
+The second note was less short, but more mysterious:--
+
+     MR. MACGRABB:
+
+     _Respected Sir_,--That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying
+     out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.
+     Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has
+     one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its
+     stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it won’t digest a
+     piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill
+     the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful
+
+                                                      THOMAS GALLAGHER.
+
+
+
+The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives
+from Macgrabb:--
+
+                                               THE LODGE, Dec. 7, 1880.
+
+     _My dear Mr. McCarthy_,--I find on looking over the office books
+     that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.
+     His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his
+     father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,
+     and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I
+     would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of
+     course you know the consequences of delay.
+
+     Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                       GEORGE MACGRABB.
+
+     _Dear Constable_,--Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to
+     drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.
+
+                                                                GEORGE.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.
+
+To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his
+note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its
+literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,
+for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more
+for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat
+annoyed, even if it did not alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was
+a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have
+killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost
+receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive
+interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the
+missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated
+blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document
+obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to
+breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the
+barracks of its treasure.
+
+On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the
+fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after
+Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent
+to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment
+against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the
+said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why
+such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious
+tenant.
+
+On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.
+
+“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day
+or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from
+McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was
+stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the
+_Irish World_ found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the
+bench against him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We
+landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G--d, I’ll
+put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll
+be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have
+every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other
+rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them
+down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more
+men.”
+
+“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a
+vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,
+didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains
+of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a
+fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save
+young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?
+He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then
+look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.
+Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind--”
+
+The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating
+and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a
+hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the
+hamper was attached a card:--
+
+“A Christmas Box--From Harry McCarthy.”
+
+“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,
+with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from
+the box a “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher
+and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the
+goose!”
+
+They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,
+as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as
+ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the
+law.
+
+The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time
+before he could read its contents:--
+
+     _My poor Gallagher_,--I do not wish to deprive you of your
+     Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
+     collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
+     last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
+     has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
+     exploring turn of mind that I admire--though certainly it is the
+     most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
+     confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
+     well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
+     employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
+     digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
+     and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
+     to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
+     discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
+     valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
+     has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
+     blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
+     hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
+     better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
+     your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
+     discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
+     mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
+     treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
+     which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
+     time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
+     exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
+     interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
+     author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
+     in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
+     ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
+     strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
+     would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
+     dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
+     both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,
+
+                                                        Yours, as ever,
+                                                        HARRY MCCARTHY.
+
+     P. S.--I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
+     which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
+     you tickets?
+
+They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after
+they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply
+for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the
+whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the
+greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot
+say which was the greater surprise--that which he felt when he
+encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he
+got it back again.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.
+
+
+    Brightly our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,
+      Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;
+    Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;
+      Firm is each footstep, erect every head.
+    Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,
+      Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;
+    Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry
+      Wakens the nation--Our land shall be free!
+
+    We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining
+      In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,
+    And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,
+      For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!
+    What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;
+      Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;
+    On to the contest, then, up with the green again!
+      Death to the tyrant--Our land shall be free!
+
+    The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,
+      The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;
+    Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;
+      While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!
+    Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,
+      But now she rises erect from her knee,
+    And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,
+      Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!
+
+    England no longer can mock or deride us;
+      Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;
+    Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;
+      True to the cause we shall ever remain.
+    Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;
+      Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;
+    Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,
+      Soldiers, press onward--Our land shall be free!
+
+
+
+
+PHILIPSON’S PARTY.
+
+
+Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson
+Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived
+in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the
+express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,
+which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out
+of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had
+allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three
+years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle
+manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease--with a
+view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all
+round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to
+view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was
+regarded by Old Soapsuds,--which was the very irreverend title those
+benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the
+city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime
+of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the
+tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table
+had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest
+bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson
+had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it
+would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no
+effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and
+calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict
+Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest
+of the tenants.
+
+At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going
+agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,
+ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of
+landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the
+entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put
+down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was
+smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of
+any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally
+workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked
+fifty--fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to
+beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was
+what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had
+Peter Philipson--“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.
+
+The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained
+the old housekeeper and the cook and the coachman and a stable boy,
+only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas
+Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the
+evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of
+the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first
+proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the
+neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his
+next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as
+a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he
+expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the
+recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.
+These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate
+missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,
+including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under
+penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon
+his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his
+father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle
+to the _Limehouse Chronicle_ on the proper method of settling the Irish
+difficulty.
+
+On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his
+tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay
+up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected
+so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the
+farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men
+who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them
+retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say
+that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be
+a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,
+and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,
+he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got
+round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest
+without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”
+
+“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an
+ill-disguised sneer.
+
+Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the
+wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the
+twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.
+
+“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, we’re here to bring _you_ to _your_ senses; not to show that
+we’ve parted with our own.”
+
+“I--I--” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t
+understand you.”
+
+“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for
+arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to
+raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long
+as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint
+too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man, to offer you a fair rint for
+this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t
+like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to
+the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”
+
+Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was
+nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he
+did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is
+mo--mo--monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in
+every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll
+evict--I’ll-I’ll--by Jove! I’ll--I’ll--Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of
+this!”
+
+“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like
+to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve
+only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,
+begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man
+to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,
+thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.
+Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts
+of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own
+fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t
+neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word
+of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A
+thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the
+deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest
+chair with a dim conviction surging through his brain that there was
+something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,
+Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than
+Ballymurphy, County Cork.
+
+After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things
+were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the
+decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about
+that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so
+how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with
+him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived
+spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was
+interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man
+Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which
+at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.
+
+“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.
+
+“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,
+she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the
+’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the
+front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe
+there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,
+’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’
+mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a
+hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with
+the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve
+come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey--I mean
+to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham--I
+didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as
+much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for
+Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of
+hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful
+Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”
+
+Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed
+sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest
+railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the
+distance he could place before nightfall between himself and
+Ballymurphy.
+
+A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had
+spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires
+were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision
+store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig
+he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his
+equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter
+groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited
+guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.
+Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring
+squires from half a dozen estates--a goodly company of fifteen or
+sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their
+wants, and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple
+of loaves to feast their appetites!
+
+It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the
+burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman
+in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the
+whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial
+in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking
+examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he
+would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?
+Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing
+his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where
+boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and
+housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he
+poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?
+
+He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.
+With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove
+the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to
+his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He
+restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the
+stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The
+party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it
+was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.
+
+If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a
+soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into the counting-house of
+Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his
+candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned
+to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be
+firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on
+the subject.
+
+
+
+
+THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.
+
+
+    Fill up once more, we’ll drink a toast
+      To comrades far away;
+    No nation on the earth can boast
+      Of braver hearts than they.
+    And though they sleep in dungeons deep,
+      Or flee, outlawed and banned,
+    We love them yet, we ne’er forget
+      The felons of our land!
+
+    In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,
+      Foredoomed by alien laws,
+    Some on the scaffold proudly died
+      For holy Ireland’s cause.
+    And brothers, say, shall we to-day
+      Unmoved like cowards stand,
+    While traitors shame and foes defame
+      The felons of our land?
+
+    Some in the convict’s dreary cell
+      Have found a living tomb,
+    And some unseen, unfriended, fell
+      Within its silent gloom.
+    Yet what care we, although it be
+      Trod by a ruffian band,
+    God bless the clay where rest to-day
+      The felons of our land!
+
+    Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,
+      Oh, little do we care,
+    A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown
+      An Irish head can wear!
+    And every Gael in Innisfail
+      Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,
+    From Lee to Boyne would gladly join
+      The felons of our land!
+
+
+
+
+AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.
+
+
+    The wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,
+    In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;
+      And as he contemplated the interminable rain,
+      On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,
+    For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.
+
+    The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,
+    And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,
+      As he thought of bronchial attacks,
+      Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,
+    And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.
+
+    The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,
+    The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil
+      Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,
+      O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,
+    And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.
+
+    His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,
+    And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,
+      His gloomy face relaxed,--indeed, he actually laughed;
+      He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught
+    That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.
+
+    He whispered to the jarvey--“You remember Murphy’s land;
+    Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?
+      That is, could you perambulate
+      Around that gentleman’s estate
+    In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?
+
+    “You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,
+    But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,
+      Return the muddy boots to me
+      Unbrushed, because I wish to be
+    Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.”
+
+    That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,
+    He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,
+      He simply mopped the boots around
+      The dirtiest adjacent ground,
+    And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.
+
+    And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent
+    Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,
+    Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,
+      Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure
+      That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,
+    That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.
+
+
+
+
+A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.
+
+
+    I’m diminted,--this is awful; so it is
+      My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;
+    ’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz
+      The time I lost my churning through the thunder.
+    Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,
+      An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary--
+    Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!--
+      Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.
+
+    I wouldn’t mind the ould man,--not a jot;
+      I always looked upon him as a blaggard,
+    Since his language was so disperately hot,
+     Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.
+    They might pass their resolutions by the score
+      About him, and I would niver prove contrary,
+    But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore
+      Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.
+
+    Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,
+      Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;
+    An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,
+      Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.
+    Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;
+      They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,
+    An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,--
+      Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.
+
+    If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,
+      Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,
+    Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,
+      An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,
+    I would do my best endayvors to obey;
+      But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy
+    Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,--
+      Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!
+
+
+
+
+A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.
+
+
+    O Peggy, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,
+    And help me to recover from my state of discontint;
+    There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,
+    And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.
+            For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,
+            By the light of that same silver moon,
+                  Found out of his bed,
+                  But will straightway be led
+                  To a cushion of plank,
+                  That of feathers is blank,
+            An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.
+
+    Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,
+    With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;
+    Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant
+    Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;
+            An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste
+            For resting his arm round your waist,
+                An’ except for a sigh,
+                Or a glance of your eye,
+                Or an odd little squeeze
+                That there’s nobody sees,
+            His comfort will be of the laste.
+
+    Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,
+    Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?
+    I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,
+    I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;
+            I despised my five miles of a thramp
+            In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,
+                For I knew at its ind
+                I could always dipind
+                That some one I’d find
+                Who had sootherings kind,
+            To rescue my sperits from damp.
+
+    But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,
+    The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;
+    And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,
+    I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.
+            An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,
+            Stritched out on an ould cabin door,
+                With six ounces of lead
+                Settled inside my head,
+                An’ my bosom, that’s true
+                As the saints unto you,
+            Disarranged by an ounce or two more.
+
+    Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,
+    Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;
+    And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,
+    That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;
+            So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,
+            And the law has such far-seeing eyes,
+                ’Twould find thim all out,
+                And there isn’t a doubt
+                Introduced I would be,
+                By some dirty J. P.,
+            To a suit of the Government frieze.
+
+
+
+
+O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.
+
+BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.
+
+
+    Gallant sons of Innisfail,
+    Ye whose stout hearts never quail,
+    Though no glittering coats of mail
+        Their proud throbbings hide:
+    Hark! yon distant sullen hum!
+    ’Tis the rolling of the drum.
+    See! our Saxon foemen come
+        In their wrath and pride.
+
+    Meet them, comrades, face to face,
+    Meet them as becomes our race,
+    Let no shadow of disgrace
+        Dim our spotless name.
+    Front to front, unshrinking, stand,
+    Fire each heart and nerve each hand,
+    Strike for God and fatherland,
+        Liberty and fame!
+
+    Kinsmen, they are still the same
+    As when, centuries past, they came
+    To our shores, and blood and flame
+        Followed in their track;
+    By the still uncancelled debt
+    We were cowards to forget,
+    By the wrongs we suffer yet,
+        Drive them headlong back!
+
+    As when angry billows leap,
+    Like proud chargers from the deep,
+    Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep
+        All their wrath to spray,
+    So their glinting waves of steel
+    Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel
+    Till their serried columns reel,
+        Scattered in dismay.
+
+    Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be
+    Still unconquered, proud, and free;
+    Strike, and fear not,--victory
+        Waits on every blow;
+    Strike, that we may never roam
+    Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;
+    Strike together, and strike home,
+        Vengeance on the foe!
+
+
+
+
+THE FENIAN’S DREAM.
+
+CHRISTMAS, 1867.
+
+
+    Through London’s dull and murky air
+      The merry Christmas bells
+    Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,
+      Their sonorous throbs and swells.
+    To the half-slumbering town they spoke
+      Of peace and God’s good-will,
+    And seemed to chase with pealing stroke
+      The fiends of hate and ill;
+    But, ah, how cruelly they broke
+      Around dark Pentonville!
+
+    There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,
+      Half timid, forced their way,
+    And fell in slender, silvery streams,
+      Down where the convict lay.
+    They glanced a moment round the place,
+      Cold, comfortless, and bare,
+    Then, in a pitying embrace,
+      Like angel spirits there,
+    Caressed the careworn, pallid face,
+      So wan, and yet so fair.
+
+    They seemed to whisper softly while
+      Around his head they strayed,
+    For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,
+      Half joy, half anguish, played;
+    As if the tender moonbeams sought
+      Bright tales of hope to tell,
+    And the day memories, bitter, wrought
+      Such fancies to dispel;
+    And so his two dream guardians fought
+      Within his lonely cell.
+
+    His dream was of the loved old land
+      He never could forget--
+    The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,
+      Had not subdued it yet;
+    The land of legend and of lay,
+      Of mountain, stream, and lake,
+    Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,
+      Of forest, glen, and brake,
+    Where highland sprite and lowland fay
+      A home forever make.
+
+    The land whose children toil and bleed,
+      And drudge and starve in vain,
+    For where the peasant sows the seed,
+      A stranger reaps the grain.
+    The Isle of Saints--where knaves and spies
+      Flourish and thrive apace;
+    Where fortune must be wooed by lies,
+      Dishonor, and disgrace;
+    The true man from such saintdom flies,
+      And cattle take his place.
+
+    Land of the green, and of the gray!
+      For workhouse, tomb, and jail
+    Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,
+      And answer, Innisfail,
+    Tell us which tint thou seest most,
+      The old one or the new?
+    The green of which our poets boast,
+      Or the more sombre hue?
+    Few wear the green: a countless host
+      Have donned the gray for you.
+
+    Island of verdure, glorious land!
+      So rich in fertile plains,
+    Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,
+      Yet famine ever reigns;
+    Where through the mellow ripening corn
+      The balmiest zephyrs sigh,
+    Where brighter seems each glowing morn,
+      More radiant each sky;
+    Where ’tis misfortune to be born,
+      And happiness to die.
+
+    Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled
+      To think he played once more,
+    A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,
+      Beside the cabin door--
+    The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,
+      Upon his mother’s knee,
+    He first had learned to lisp a prayer
+      For Ireland’s liberty,
+    And ever pregnant seemed the air
+      With joyous melody.
+
+    His fancy changed: the youthful face
+      In sternness now was set,
+    His woes had left no coward trace
+      Upon his spirit yet;
+    His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,
+      His cheeks were all aglow;
+    Expanded seemed the hollow chest,
+      His brows contract, as though
+    Disturbed and broken was his rest
+      By some nocturnal foe.
+
+    He dreamt that in his native land,
+      Away from this bleak jail,
+    He stood within a meadow grand,
+      A shamrock-spangled vale.
+    Above the scene the sun-rays bright
+      In glittering grandeur beamed,
+    Around him in their golden light
+      Ten thousand bayonets beamed,
+    And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!
+      Green Erin’s banner streamed.
+
+    From town and village, hill and glen,
+      With clamorous fife and drum,
+    From mountain brake and lowland fen
+      The mustering legions come;
+    The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,
+      Has brought his dinted blade;
+    While quickly from the neighboring town
+      Flock in the sons of trade;
+    The farmer flings his good spade down,
+      And joins the dense brigade.
+
+    The fiery Northmen, in whose veins
+      Still flows the blood of those
+    Who on a hundred battle-plains
+      Have conquered Erin’s foes--
+    The brave descendants of O’Neill,
+      A stern and fearless band,
+    A living wall of sparkling steel
+      Beneath the old flag stand,
+    And many a Saxon foe shall feel
+      Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.
+
+    With Ulster’s columns, side by side,
+      Are Munster’s squadrons massed,
+    Like tigers into line they glide,
+      So noiselessly and fast;
+    Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green
+      They bear into the fray,
+    Through England’s host their sabres keen
+      Shall carve a corse-strewn way,
+    And Limerick and Skibbereen
+      Be well avenged to-day.
+
+    Proud Leinster, all your chivalry
+      To arms electric spring;
+    High ’mid the battle’s revelry
+      Your stirring shout shall ring;
+    And many a foe this day shall rue
+      Your fierce, impetuous might;
+    The scenes that gallant Wexford knew
+      Shall be reversed ere night;
+    The epitaph to Emmet due
+      Your gleaming swords shall write.
+
+    O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives
+      Within your ranks this hour;
+    Before the strength your hatred gives
+      Well may the despot cower.
+    Think of your long, black night of tears,
+      And say, can you forget
+    The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers--
+      That huge, uncancelled debt,
+    The wrongs of thrice two hundred years
+      That scourge your province yet?
+
+    Hark to that distant rumbling sound!
+      See, yonder come the foe;
+    Now be our arms with victory crowned,
+      The foreign scum laid low.
+    The stillness and the calm are o’er,
+      And many a sulphurous cloud,
+    Betinged with flame and dripping gore,
+      Shall form a battle-shroud
+    For those whose tongues may swell no more
+      The nation’s slogan loud.
+
+    Like hostile torrents armies clash,
+      And steel now crosses steel,
+    The lurid flames incessant flash,
+      And volleyed thunders peal;
+    But backward reel the alien ranks,
+      With one exultant cry,
+    Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,
+      Not vainly will ye die;
+    Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,
+      The craven red-coats fly!
+
+    ’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;
+      And though yon darling flag
+    May float above our castle towers
+      A torn and tattered rag,
+    ’Tis still our own; and every fold
+      Preserved us from the strife,
+    Each shred around that flag-staff rolled
+      Unpierced by ball or knife,
+    Is worth a mine of virgin gold--
+      Aye, worth a hero’s life.
+
+    From slimy cell and dungeon damp
+      Bring forth our prisoned men;
+    Gather, ye braves, from every camp,
+      To cheer them home again.
+    What though to-day they did not bleed
+      To share our victory,
+    We reap the harvest of their seed,
+      So victors still they be;
+    From faction they our people freed,
+      And now our land is free.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake
+      The city with your strain;
+    Your loudest music cannot break
+      The felon’s rest again.
+    His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,
+      Nor left a single ray,
+    For all that but this moment shone
+      Retreat before the day;
+    But that last, loving, pitying one
+      Has borne his soul away.
+
+    “Died in his cell”--and nothing more;
+      ’Twas all his comrades heard;
+    But of the dream he had before
+      He died,--oh, not a word!
+    They found him on the coarse straw bed,
+      A smile upon his face,
+    And, “Number 28 found dead,”
+      Was whispered round the place;
+    And the jail doctor shook his head
+      And wondered at the case!
+
+
+
+
+THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]
+
+
+    An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,
+      ’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,
+    There is not much fun in recovering rent
+      Where the Land League has hold of the people;
+                But upheaval of earth
+                Is good reason for mirth,
+        ’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,
+                Compared to a seat
+                Where the Commoners meet
+        When Mulligan rises to order.
+
+    A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,
+      Catarrhic attacks are not charming,
+    There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain
+      That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.
+                Should close diagnosis
+                Reveal your probocis
+        To be of your weakness recorder,
+                You might foolishly curse;
+                But it’s very much worse
+        When Mulligan rises to order.
+
+    The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,
+      A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,
+    Are music compared to the agonized yell
+      Of rage and derision, his greeting;
+                You go home to your bed
+                With a pain in your head,
+        By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;
+                Your sleep is a blight,
+                Your comfort takes flight,
+                Your breathing is tight,
+                You scratch and you bite,
+                Or you wake with affright
+                As you dream through the night
+        That Mulligan rises to order!
+
+
+
+
+ERIN MACHREE (1798).
+
+
+    The sun had gone down in a halo of glory,
+      And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray
+    On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,
+      The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.
+    Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,
+    And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,
+    We gathered together in sorrow and weeping
+      For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!
+
+    From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,
+      Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;
+    We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,
+      And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.
+    Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us
+    We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,
+    While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus
+      That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!
+
+    But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,
+      Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;
+    When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,
+      ’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!
+    Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,
+    The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,
+    Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying
+      The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!
+
+    Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow
+      With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;
+    Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow--
+      That morning must dawn on our island at last.
+    Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;
+    Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them
+    To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them
+      To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!
+
+
+
+
+THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.
+
+
+When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years
+ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret
+conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he
+decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and
+Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly
+attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently
+to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the
+combined detective forces.
+
+Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff
+of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua
+Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to
+Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his
+impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is
+fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul
+aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely
+jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount
+Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,
+cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.
+
+She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional
+nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all
+the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a
+renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his
+constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,
+in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in
+petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix
+surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his
+coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces.
+Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the
+postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was
+quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to
+witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the
+other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a
+miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging
+promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase
+to that winning post, the door.
+
+Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of
+night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst
+out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be
+snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the
+amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would
+remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of
+slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of
+feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.
+
+Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra
+professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,
+but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or
+other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of
+civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed
+on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any
+postal manual.
+
+Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not
+phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad
+fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our
+rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.
+London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and
+cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to
+Love’s young dream in the entire A division.
+
+He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids
+either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and
+there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a
+maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted
+brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every
+five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a
+week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a
+school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or
+so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular
+as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed
+around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of
+sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If
+accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and
+forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.
+
+In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen
+cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four
+washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.
+
+His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent
+intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley
+Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of
+promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare
+not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet
+day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big
+brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted
+to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular
+London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.
+
+No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all
+these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he
+brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been
+kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not
+been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful
+affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,
+Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2
+guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”
+
+The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer
+in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the
+elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the
+confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their
+secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the
+pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.
+
+By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It
+was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,
+but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see
+her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill
+under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
+
+He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest
+observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”
+he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold
+forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,
+mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight
+effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,
+water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no
+response.
+
+“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens
+reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up
+alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a
+disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and
+electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a
+stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred
+spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,
+of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare
+the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,
+and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with
+me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or
+Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest
+Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or
+whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”
+
+And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the
+bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of
+which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of
+plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool
+shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman
+was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at
+robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in
+the shape of tears.
+
+The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted
+Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the
+most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t
+tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish
+colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a
+charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought
+it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’
+figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.
+
+This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which
+shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit
+those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily
+Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping
+vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to
+remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins
+himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of
+his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at
+least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric
+light.
+
+
+
+
+BALFOUR’S WISH.
+
+
+    When members have taken their usual places,
+      And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,
+    The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,
+      Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;
+    And as, one by one, question follows on question,
+      Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,
+    In agony mental that spoils his digestion,
+      But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”
+
+    “Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,
+      “How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”
+    “Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,
+      “The average size of potatoes in Clare?”
+    A third seeks a legal opinion, without
+      Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,
+    And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,
+      While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.
+
+    Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,
+      Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,
+    What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?
+      Does he ever indulge in the national car?
+    Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?
+      Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?
+    And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,
+      “Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”
+
+
+
+
+OUR CAUSE.
+
+
+    Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,
+    Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,
+    Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,
+    Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,
+    Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,
+    With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:
+    Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,
+    For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!
+
+    Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,
+    And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,
+    And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,
+    They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.
+    The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,
+    No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,
+    But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,
+    The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.
+
+    It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;
+    It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;
+    O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more
+    Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.
+    Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,
+    And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;
+    But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,
+    And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.
+
+    What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,
+    That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,
+    That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,
+    Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?
+    ’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,
+    No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;
+    Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,
+    And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!
+
+
+
+
+SERVED HIM RIGHT.
+
+     [An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the
+     Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat
+     right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor
+     creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”--_London
+     Graphic._]
+
+
+    I have no tears for brother Pat,
+      Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,
+    On the Egyptian desert, that
+      He might assist in England’s glory.
+    The foes he fought were not his own,
+      Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;
+    Then why should I his fate bemoan?
+      O brother, faithless and degraded!
+
+    He saw how Saxon laws at home
+      Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,
+    Why should he cross the ocean’s foam
+      To place that hated yoke on others?
+    The Arabs slew him in a fight
+      For all by brave and free men cherished--
+    Ay, for the cause of truth and right,
+      For which his kith and kin had perished.
+
+    No Arab chief in Ninety-eight
+      Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;
+    They lent no spears to swell the hate
+      Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.
+    But those who wrapt our homes in flame
+      And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle--
+    It was for them--oh, burning shame!
+      My brother gave his life in battle.
+
+    Sure, every memory of late
+      Must from his wretched heart have vanished;
+    Our hills and valleys desolate,
+      Our ruined homes, our people banished.
+    And yet, God knows, he learned in youth
+      The gloomy story of his sireland--
+    Drank in at mother’s knees the truth
+      That England is the scourge of Ireland.
+
+    I cannot weep for brother Pat--
+      I hate the hellish cause he died for;
+    False traitor to the freedom that
+      His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;
+    E’en when in tearful dreams I see
+      The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,
+    My grief is changed to anger. He
+      Was treacherous to the land that bore him!
+
+
+
+
+RAPPAREE SONG.
+
+
+    Come up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,
+    And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;
+    The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,
+    And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.
+    Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,
+    And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:
+    Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears
+    We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.
+
+    They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die
+    Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;
+    Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,
+    And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;
+    Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows--
+    They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;
+    And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,
+    Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!
+
+    We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,
+    We’re traitors because we are true to our land,
+    And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel
+    That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!
+    They have hunted us down now for many a day;
+    To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;
+    For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,
+    Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.
+
+
+    You tendered us when famine came
+      The pity of a thought,
+    Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame
+      And hearts and souls you’d bought.
+    Time’s wheel turns round--you’ve lost your place,
+    And right into your tyrant face,
+                Your jibes and sneers
+                Of many years
+                At victims’ tears
+                  Are thrown,
+                And in God’s name,
+                Our hearts aflame,
+                To-day we claim
+                  Our own!
+
+    Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,
+      Muscle and brain we wrought.
+    Toiled, starved, and died--scarce for ourselves
+      The crumbs of Lazarus sought;
+    And when ye flung us out a crust,
+    Our faces grovelling in the dust,
+          We gave ye thanks--
+          No prize, all blanks
+          In our poor ranks
+            Was known;
+          But now, thank God,
+          We’ve spurned your rod,
+          And claim this sod
+            Our own!
+
+    We lift our faces to the sky
+      Where once our heads were bowed,
+    We breathe no more a timid sigh,
+      But speak our thoughts aloud.
+    From dizzy hill and peaceful plain
+    Our voices join in this refrain:
+          The seeds we sow,
+          The crops we grow,
+          The fields we mow,
+            Alone,
+          Without your aid
+          In cash or spade
+          At last are made
+            Our own!
+
+
+
+
+BALFOUR REJOICES.
+
+
+    So the toil of the session is over,
+      My woes for a period cease,
+    And hey for a journey by Dover
+      To latitudes promising peace;
+    Away to recuperate vigor--
+      Away from obstruction’s mad spell--
+    Away from the questions of Biggar--
+      Away from the taunts of Parnell.
+
+    No more my poor head shall be aching
+      With night after night of debate--
+    No more shall my soul feel a quaking
+      At bald, irrepressible prate.
+    And, though ocean attack me with rigor,
+      While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell
+    On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,
+      And getting away from Parnell.
+
+    No more to be quizzed on each capture
+      Of priest or of peasant by night--
+    I could dance the can-can in my rapture,
+      Or stand on my head with delight.
+    Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,
+      Or like a wild Irishman yell
+    Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,
+      And don’t give--ahem--for Parnell!
+
+    Yet I feel an occasional spasm
+      At thoughts of returning at all,
+    ’Twere better to leap down a chasm
+      Or under an avalanche fall;
+    Or, fingers embracing the trigger,
+      Let the pistol’s report loudly tell
+    How I hated the queries of Biggar
+      And the dolorous talk of Parnell.
+
+
+
+
+A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.
+
+
+There may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that
+powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville _Sparrow_, is a
+sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be
+the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville
+_Sparrow_ (_vide_ its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in
+the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of
+Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and
+creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so
+tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the
+times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the
+Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York
+_Herald_ and _Tribune_ and _Times_ and the Boston _Herald_ and a score
+of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the
+_Sparrow_ felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by
+following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,
+advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold
+himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial
+back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He
+was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old
+copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the
+landed gentry of the country.
+
+His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of ground. “You
+know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were
+there. We’ve got to lick the New York _Herald_ and the rest of ’em.
+Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.
+There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious
+management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d
+better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do
+to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might
+skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and
+give us some lively telegrams.”
+
+Well, it _was_ lively for a few weeks after that in the _Sparrow_. One
+day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland--Seven Landlords Shot!” The next
+there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara--Six Agents
+Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the _Tribune_ came out
+with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there
+had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and
+seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious
+reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,
+and who didn’t grasp the fact that the _Tribune’s_ was a three-months’
+record, paralyzed the readers of the _Sparrow_ with a blood-curdling
+telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in
+the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in
+their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having
+suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and
+processes on the half-shell, to being stripped naked and turned loose
+for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time
+the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names
+eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to
+improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of
+variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred
+land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should
+diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:--
+
+     “GALWAY, Tuesday.--A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from
+     which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon
+     yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he
+     weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have
+     been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new
+     veins yet.”
+
+     “At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan
+     boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she
+     can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She
+     wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”
+
+This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the
+editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,
+according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers
+began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen
+murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of
+errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as
+well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the
+chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable bar next door.
+“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.
+Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,
+and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy
+for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the
+_Sparrow_, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish
+correspondent:--
+
+“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose
+energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a
+position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.
+As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,
+and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who
+for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his
+repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to
+abbreviate.
+
+“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose
+brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible
+marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,
+whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin
+elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature
+had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy
+proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we
+asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.
+
+“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of
+being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness
+will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was
+down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought
+me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything
+like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They
+were worn to threads.
+
+“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make
+a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could
+produce anything like a respectable shade.
+
+“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of
+the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the
+others.
+
+“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to
+bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.
+
+“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He
+felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion
+warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and
+succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary
+instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow
+you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.
+
+“‘I gave the man a shilling for him--in two sixpences, so that he could
+balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side
+pocket, it would have brought him down.
+
+“‘I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s
+centre of gravity.
+
+“‘I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the dining-room, but,
+fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.
+In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom
+of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He
+couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.
+He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his
+feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position
+when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect
+his tail.’
+
+“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double
+knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much
+so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot
+out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a
+moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the
+Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails
+in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had
+a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’
+concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of
+a knot on a dog’s tail!’”
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH BRIGADE.
+
+
+    When in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,
+    They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,
+      A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.
+    A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,
+    Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;
+    And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,
+    ’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,
+      And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,
+    When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,--
+      The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.
+    They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,
+    And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,
+    Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,
+    Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose
+      From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,
+    Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,
+      Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;
+    The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang
+    O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang
+    From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might
+    Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,
+      Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,
+    Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,
+      In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.
+    Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,
+    They loved the green island, and died where they fought;
+    With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.
+    May we fight the battle of freedom as well
+      For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!
+
+
+
+
+SNOOKS.
+
+
+Justice in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the
+law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high
+priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist
+temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about
+one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British
+honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only
+pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very
+corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends
+to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should
+be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,
+he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable
+record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:--
+
+     “In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative
+     to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of
+     the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There
+     is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.
+     When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he
+     holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks
+     [_laughter_] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by
+     Snooks.’ [_Laughter._]”
+
+Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect
+that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of
+the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,
+deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest
+admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to
+that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:--
+
+    If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street
+    In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,
+    A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,
+      And confusion quite apparent in his looks,
+    An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,
+    You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;
+    The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,
+      ’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.
+
+    A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose
+    It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows
+    A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,
+      Which his dignity but very little brooks.
+    You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,
+    And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,
+    Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff--
+      ’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!
+
+
+
+
+CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.
+
+
+Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of
+whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into
+one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her
+like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism
+first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had
+just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel
+leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty
+conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was
+felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been
+foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at
+Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and
+hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and
+provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful
+conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had
+been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky
+Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The
+volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and
+eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible
+confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their
+presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,
+while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like
+Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were
+seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s
+residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with
+nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express
+for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the
+suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of
+engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the
+defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in
+England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they
+were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed
+to the depths of the silent waters.
+
+It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm
+existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was
+augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county
+constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest
+surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public
+buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags
+of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the
+sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like
+Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,
+and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent
+of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he
+ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.
+Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian
+bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon
+the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in
+garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer
+when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing
+the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the
+troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the
+ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the
+barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,
+bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,
+sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into
+as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.
+
+Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of
+Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without
+knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the
+Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,
+and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of
+Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,
+and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.
+Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and
+tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the
+entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow
+candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as
+to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an
+Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they
+were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold
+the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander
+carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the
+candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or
+was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege
+last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of
+the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a
+doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when
+at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to
+find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and
+would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions
+of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm
+tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that
+battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as
+the Caledonian Candlesticks.
+
+
+
+
+FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.
+
+
+    So they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,
+    A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;
+    Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,
+    And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;
+    All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,
+    With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,
+    Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,
+    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+    When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,
+    Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,
+    Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,
+    Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;
+    With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,
+    With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,
+    You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,
+    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+    No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?
+    You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;
+    You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,
+    And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;
+    But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,
+    The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,
+    A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,
+    So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+
+
+
+FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.
+
+
+    Hurrah! we stand on Irish land,
+      Our hated foe before us,
+    And once for all, to rise or fall,
+      The green flag flying o’er us,
+    We’ve raised it proudly overhead.
+      God prosper our endeavor,
+    Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,
+      To keep it there forever!
+
+    We marched away at break of day,
+      And sweethearts left behind us,
+    To strike one blow at yon false foe,
+      Whose rusty fetters bind us.
+    For while we bear the name of men,
+      We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,
+    Oh, Ireland shall be free again,
+      Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!
+
+    We’ve listened long to traitors mean,
+      False England’s scarlet praising;
+    We’ve heard them mock our Irish green
+      Until our blood seemed blazing!
+    And chieftains, too, who should be true,
+      Have kept our ranks asunder,
+    But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned
+      In Freedom’s battle-thunder!
+
+    Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,
+      No matter who may lead ’em,
+    And here’s a curse on every slave
+      Who mars the cause of freedom!
+    Let leaders vain aside remain
+      Until their feuds are ended,
+    ’Tis by the man who knows no clan
+      Our flag must be defended.
+
+    We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,
+      From Limerick’s walls to Derry,
+    Bold ramblers from the County Clare
+      And mountaineers from Kerry.
+    We’ll chase our alien foes away,
+      We’ll tear our bonds asunder;
+    We care not who’s to lead to-day,
+      _We’ll_ fight and conquer under!
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.[D]
+
+
+    Far away from the home and the friends they love best,
+    ’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;
+    Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot
+    Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!
+
+    In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,
+    With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;
+    And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,
+    On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!
+
+    Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,
+    True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,
+    With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree--
+    Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!
+
+    When they took them away from that desolate place,
+    They found death had left a bright smile on each face,
+    So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see
+    How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!
+
+    For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind
+    The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;
+    And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,
+    Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!
+
+    Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,
+    Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;
+    And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave
+    Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!
+
+
+
+
+DEATH’S VICTORY.
+
+IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.
+
+
+    The Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;
+    The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;
+    For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,
+    And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.
+
+    But with these ’tis not death--for through every age,
+    In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,
+    In the stories they tell, the examples they give,
+    Of Genius and Truth--he will live! he will live!
+
+    With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine
+    To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;
+    In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,
+    To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.
+
+    But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace
+    The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,
+    The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,
+    That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?
+
+    Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave
+    Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;
+    No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed--
+    He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.
+
+
+    Bear it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,
+      On, on, through the smoke and the glare;
+    Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,
+      We will plant it triumphantly there.
+    Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,
+      ’Twas lost at the base of the hill,
+    See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,
+      Our flag waves triumphantly still!
+
+    We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,
+      In sunshine and shower, side by side;
+    To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,
+      Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;
+    And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,
+      Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,
+    And our foes even then shall behold that above us
+      Our flag waves triumphantly still!
+
+    ’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;
+      The flag that our children shall bear
+    When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder
+      Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.
+    ’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,
+      And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill
+    To see in the land of their love and devotion
+      Our flag wave triumphantly still.
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.
+
+
+    Come kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and
+    from North,
+    Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!
+    It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak
+    The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;
+    It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,
+    From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,
+    With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,
+    To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.
+
+    Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?
+    Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?
+    Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod
+    By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?
+    ’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,
+    Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?
+    No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand
+    For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!
+
+    By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those
+    Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;
+    By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;
+    By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;
+    By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,
+    And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,
+    Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,
+    Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!
+
+
+
+
+HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.
+
+
+    Arouse ye from your slumbering,
+      Awake to life once more,
+    The time for idle pleadings
+      And for vain regrets is o’er;
+    We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,
+      But in a fight like men,
+    With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms
+      We’ll win our own again.
+
+        Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!
+          Till death we stand,
+          To make our land
+            A nation proud and free.
+
+    We bent unto the tyrant,
+      And we prayed in vain for years,
+    But now we’re going to try, boys,
+      Rifle-balls instead of tears.
+    Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,
+      The rolling of the drum,
+    And in future our petitions
+      From the cannon’s mouth shall come.--Hurrah!
+
+    From Galway right to Wicklow,
+      And from Cork to Donegal,
+    We’ll march once more for liberty
+      To win it or to fall.
+    We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,
+      And guard it with our steel;
+    We’ll show our foes what deadly blows
+      Each Irish arm can deal.--Hurrah!
+
+    In ages past the redcoats quailed
+      Before our fathers’ might;
+    Have we not still the courage left
+      To battle for the right?
+    Though cowards dread the troops in red,
+      We’ll cross their steel with joy,
+    And show that Irish valor was
+      Not spent at Fontenoy.
+
+    The wily knave, the coward slave,
+      To home and life may cling,
+    But there’s no place for falsehood’s face
+      Where gleaming sabres ring!
+    We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage
+      For Freedom and for Right;
+    Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,
+      Our last appeal is fight!
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSENGER.
+
+NOVEMBER 23, 1867.[E]
+
+
+    With bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there--
+    Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;
+    We questioned him with eager eyes--we had not power to speak,
+    For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!
+
+    Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,
+    We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;
+    And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,
+    While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!
+
+    And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,
+    And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;
+    A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,
+    That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!
+
+    And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might
+    Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;
+    Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,
+    Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel--
+
+    Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,
+    Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face--
+    Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,
+    It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!
+
+    Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,
+    And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;
+    What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,
+    For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!
+
+    He,[F] boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod
+    The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;
+    Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,
+    With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!
+
+    And he,[G] the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d
+    Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;
+    And such a death--the felon’s death--the death that villains die--
+    He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!
+
+    And, last of all, the father,[H] who that day would leave behind
+    Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:
+    No wonder if he faltered--’twas, oh God! a fearful test;
+    Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.
+
+    And these are murderers, they say--are cowards, base and vile:
+    These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle--
+    Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!
+    Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.
+
+
+
+
+A TYPICAL TRIAL.
+
+
+Joseph O’Graball, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in
+the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace
+and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid
+offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I
+shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real
+cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably
+one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional
+magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found
+temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed
+into law.
+
+Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality
+decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,
+but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to
+nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing
+faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest
+provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can
+tell an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of
+his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side
+with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every
+individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He
+is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and
+arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a
+mustache.
+
+Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life
+lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a
+simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is
+little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless
+there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting
+this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no
+leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But
+the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to
+arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,
+unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to
+his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?
+Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A
+goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about
+Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might
+have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in
+enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.
+
+With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark April night a
+sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,
+and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,
+they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty
+nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the
+indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,
+which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary
+evidence.
+
+“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”
+
+“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.
+
+“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,
+and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to
+destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious
+Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of
+England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and
+the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.
+
+“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset
+or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the
+ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”
+
+“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”
+
+“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”
+
+“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before
+my men. Come along.”
+
+Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and utterly amazed and
+confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,
+where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into
+the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones
+what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality
+a rich burlesque:--
+
+“Prisoner, what is your name?”
+
+“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”
+
+“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have
+been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of
+such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a
+note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is
+correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”
+
+“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”
+
+“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male
+gender?”
+
+“He wore breeches, anyhow.”
+
+“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,
+make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the
+customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case
+is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,
+prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”
+
+“Yes, your honor.”
+
+“And this hammer?”
+
+“Yes, your lordship.”
+
+“And these nails?”
+
+“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”
+
+“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and
+this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and
+revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your
+diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how
+far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of
+your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do
+you say?”
+
+“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood
+with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens
+be his bed; and the nails--the nails--the troth, I don’t know what I
+wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the
+sarjent.”
+
+“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.
+The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police
+barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand
+grenades.”
+
+“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but
+he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient
+magistrate proceeded:--
+
+“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”
+
+“Yes, your washup.”
+
+“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?”
+
+“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”
+
+“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter--a very
+important letter--from New York. Where did you discover that?”
+
+“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”
+
+“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream
+of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,
+prisoner, what is this drawing?”
+
+“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was
+thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so
+proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”
+
+“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with
+the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,
+with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that
+the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through
+that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”
+
+“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat
+should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking
+you are.”
+
+“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter
+is dated New York--the most treasonable locality on the face of the
+earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother--(of course you’re all brothers.
+Sergeant, make a note of that)--I write these few lines hoping they will
+find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.
+(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I
+cannot discern it just now.) I met the ould man--(Rossa, I suppose.
+Make a note, sergeant)--on landing. He would advise you not to kill the
+ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old--oh! horrible! I see it all. They have
+actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You
+might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,
+to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the
+rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means--they begin with the
+same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he
+mean by that?”
+
+“Um--um--yourself, I think, your washup.”
+
+“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel
+would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the
+overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed
+further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world
+might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such
+desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,
+I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence
+with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the
+highest sentence in my power--three months’ imprisonment--and, sergeant,
+just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”
+
+Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither
+himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought
+his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was
+convicted. And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of
+the coercion act.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.
+
+
+    Oh pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;
+    And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright
+    That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night--
+    An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.
+    I am very, very sorry for the _Alabama’s_ pranks,
+    I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,
+    But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,
+    Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.
+
+    As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,
+    Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;
+    To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,
+    And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.
+    But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare
+    Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,
+    And send his best establishments cavorting through the air--
+    Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.
+
+    Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,
+    A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.
+    Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,
+    And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.
+    There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,
+    Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,
+    And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,
+    Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.
+
+    Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,
+    I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.
+    And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,
+    Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.
+    But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,
+    Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,
+    Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,
+    Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A BOMB.
+
+
+    Where Shannon’s waves with smiling face
+    Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,
+    A modest cabin stood beside
+    Its gentle perfume-laden tide.
+    The sunshine of an honest life,
+    A prattling child, a loving wife,
+    The joys of home, their blessings shed
+    Around the peasant tenant’s head.
+        The twinkling stars of summer skies
+        Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,
+        His baby’s locks the noonday rays
+        Encircled with a golden haze.
+
+    But drear December, dark and chill,
+    Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,
+    Sickness and famine scourged the land;
+    And in their train the landlord band,
+    And aiding in their mission dire
+    The liveried hounds in England’s hire.
+    In one brief hour their work was o’er,
+    A happy home was home no more.
+        The wintry skies looked sadly down,
+        Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,
+        Upon the babe that sobbed to rest
+        Upon its dying mother’s breast.
+
+    A week--a month--he had no power
+    To mark or count each anguished hour,
+    He knew not if ’twere night or day
+    When wife and infant passed away.
+    Without a hope to dull the pain
+    That numbed his heart and seared his brain,
+    Despair behind and gloom before,
+    He left his native Shannon’s shore,
+        Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press
+        The ship’s dark side with fond caress,
+        While chimes from many a distant bell
+        Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.
+
+    Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,
+    With earnest faces fierce and grim,
+    Are gathered near a silent swamp,
+    Rough toilers from a mining camp;
+    The rasping tones of Ulster greet
+    The voice of Munster soft and sweet,
+    And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,
+    But one and all are Ireland’s friends.
+        Yet whispering pines that bend above
+        Hear words of hatred, not of love;
+        Tears that from eyes of strong men fall
+        Are not of mercy, but of gall.
+
+    Each has a sickening tale to tell
+    Of England’s robber rule of hell,
+    Each has a deeply cherished cause
+    To hate her power and curse her laws.
+    “Then who will venture life, and go
+    To wreak our vengeance on this foe,
+    Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”
+    And he from Shannon answers “I!”
+        The western breezes catch the vow
+        That surges from his bosom now,
+        The exile’s vengeful brand to bear
+        And smite the tiger in his lair.
+
+    In Babylonian halls to-night
+    Are strains of mirth and flashing light,
+    The sheen of satin, gleaming gems
+    In scores of priceless diadems;
+    These are the butterflies, the drones,
+    Vampires who feed on blood and bones.
+    Ah, cruel parasites, beware,
+    One victim of your wrong is there.
+        The London skies are black with cloud
+        The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,
+        As by the despot’s citadel
+        A hand from Shannon fires the shell.
+
+    England, to thee and thine belongs
+    The memory of uncounted wrongs
+    That, multiplied through all the years,
+    Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.
+    Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,
+    Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold
+    Can turn the wrath thou hast defied
+    Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.
+        Thy future sky is overcast,
+        Thy halcyon days forever past,
+        Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm
+        Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.
+
+
+
+
+AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).
+
+
+    Avenging, though dim, with the dust of inaction,
+      And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,
+    With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,
+      And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,
+    The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,
+      Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,
+    To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,
+      That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.
+
+    The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,
+      With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,
+    But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number
+      That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.
+    And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,
+      To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,
+    The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow
+      The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).
+
+
+    Christmas is here with its fun and frivolity,
+      Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,
+    Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,
+      We should be happy--for Christmas is here.
+    Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,
+      We have no heart for festivities gay--
+    Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,
+      Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.
+        Oh, dear! what will become of us?
+        Will they blow up every man or but some of us?
+        Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!
+        Give us a rest--we are pining away.
+
+    Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior
+      To the dread terrors that nightly control
+    All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,
+      Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!
+    Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,
+      Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,
+    For we may not place a moment’s dependency
+      How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!
+        O Lord! but the immensity
+        Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity
+        Splits through the dullest official head’s density,
+        Turning our locks into premature gray.
+
+    Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,
+      Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,
+    Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,
+      Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.
+    How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,
+      When it may shortly be scattered around,
+    With scarce a prospect--oh future precarious!
+      That a brass button would ever be found?
+        Oh, dear! is there a river in
+        England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in
+        Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in
+        Each beating heart that is left above ground?
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).
+
+
+    Oh, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears
+    Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,
+    Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?
+    The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?
+    In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom
+    Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;
+    See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown--
+    God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!
+
+    Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons
+    Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,
+    And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear
+    Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;
+    Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow
+    That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?
+    Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,
+    God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!
+
+    Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest
+    From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;
+    May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped
+    Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;
+    For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,
+    Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,
+    Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;
+    So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.
+
+
+    John Bull looked haggard and drear
+                            With fear,
+    As the bells rang out the old year,
+                            “Oh, dear!”
+    He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,
+    I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,
+    My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,--
+                            It’s queer.
+
+    “With Hans I would like to agree,
+                            For he
+    Is an inch or two taller than me,
+                            You see;
+    But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,
+    And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,
+    And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout
+                                    Mit glee.’
+
+    “Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way
+                                    Is gay
+    At my numerous signs of decay
+                                    Each day;
+    He snaps his fingers right under my nose,
+    Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,
+    And has not a pitying word for my woes
+                                    To say.
+
+    “I once could warn Ivan the bear--
+                                    Take care
+    How the lion you stir in his lair,
+                                    Beware!
+    But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,
+    And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,
+    And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat
+                                    Out there.
+
+    “But my worst and my ugliest fright,
+                                    A sight
+    That keeps me in shivering plight
+                                    All night,
+    Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,
+    He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,
+    And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know
+                                    His might!
+
+    “So for me there’s no Happy New Year,
+                                  Oh, dear!
+    But doubt, and misgiving, and fear
+                                  Are here.
+    My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,
+    They cuff me before and they kick me behind,
+    And in all the world not a friend can I find
+                                  To cheer!”
+
+
+
+
+READY AND STEADY.
+
+A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).
+
+
+    Ready, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,
+      Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;
+    Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,
+      Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.
+    Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor
+      Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;
+    Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,
+      You must decide in the dawning new year.
+
+    Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,
+      Comrade or foeman?--your choice must be made;
+    Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,
+      Neither has room for a neutral brigade.
+    Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,
+      There is no welcome or place for you here;
+    Arms but of you men--fearless and true men--
+      Strike the last blow in the coming new year.
+
+    Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,
+      Victory marches, but never despair;
+    Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance
+      Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.
+    Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,
+      Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,
+    Then, be your story sadness or glory,
+      Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.
+
+
+
+
+WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.
+
+
+So you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable
+of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly
+busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.
+
+You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the
+landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any
+overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of
+income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad
+luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,
+and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police
+in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered
+on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their
+money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent
+collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been
+easily managed without a peeler at all, but the landlords wanted bad to
+force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from
+them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in
+and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.
+
+So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by
+playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at
+their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting
+fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture
+outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each
+other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date
+lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,
+and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain
+Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they
+were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner
+recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”
+and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special
+correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like
+journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be
+dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,
+blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in
+Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from
+the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible
+state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar
+contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings
+of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole _corps d’armee_ and a
+part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs
+and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised
+to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,
+Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that
+head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he
+didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his
+walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly
+have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have
+found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.
+
+Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the
+parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,
+in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever
+distilled in these parts--and that’s a big word. The still was away
+somewhere in the mountains,--it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into
+geographical details,--and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger
+between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the
+towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to
+the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,
+and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe
+that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of
+that.
+
+Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and
+one day some sleeveen--it was never found out who the stag was--came
+into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat Moran had
+guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew
+that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat
+had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and
+as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband
+material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if
+he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of
+dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no
+position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might
+be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his
+brain.
+
+In five minutes he was _en route_ for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary
+men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did
+find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried
+consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen
+which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,
+and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of
+whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was
+lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,
+awaiting the crisis.
+
+The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The
+search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and
+seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They
+sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem
+examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with
+their bayonets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander
+went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He
+found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back
+with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.
+
+Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung
+to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.
+
+“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his
+foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first
+object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and
+poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.
+
+“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very
+bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this
+blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck
+on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;
+and now--”
+
+But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the
+house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with
+his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a
+pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He
+would have been left in the cold that day.
+
+You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran
+fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to
+Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.
+He would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who
+heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp
+of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There
+never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold
+of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,
+eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly
+ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur
+and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept
+upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His
+tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could
+utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him
+how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives
+it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to
+accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a
+[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]
+bad habit.”
+
+“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has
+been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has
+wasted his opportunities.”
+
+“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank
+[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I
+can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, ---- my eyes!”
+[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].
+
+“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.”
+
+“How the ---- [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and
+theological disquisitions] can I?”
+
+His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough
+scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of
+an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to
+Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a
+note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two
+three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of
+pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand
+and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he
+wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with
+himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions
+every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife
+that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over
+a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the
+arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had
+parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and
+didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better
+half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he
+offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this
+side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.
+
+His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his
+report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him
+sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official
+archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The
+reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into
+a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.
+Strange story, ain’t it?
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.[I]
+
+BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.
+
+
+    Ghastly white with affright,
+      Down stairs they thundered,
+    Peelers and grenadiers--
+      Nearly a hundred.
+
+    Out of doors shrieking loud
+      Rushed the scared hundred,
+    They had no wish to be
+      Blown up or sundered.
+    Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,
+    “Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,
+    Wildly in flight they sped--
+            Disgruntled hundred.
+
+    Bang! went that bombshell near,
+    Were they o’ercome with fear?
+    You bet your boots they were--
+            All of the hundred;
+    Theirs not to question why
+    Roof soared aloft to sky--
+    Theirs but to cut and fly
+            Sensible hundred.
+
+    Women to right of them,
+    Women to left of them,
+    Children in front of them
+            Fainted or wondered;
+    But they were trained too well--
+    They knew what meant that shell,
+    So with a gruesome yell,
+    Head over heels, pell-mell,
+            Scattered the hundred.
+
+    Did they flash sabres bare
+    Out on the trembling air?
+    No, they just left them there,
+            There to be plundered;
+    And through the struggling mass,
+    Matron and babe and lass,
+    Plunged and strove hard to pass,
+    Choking and gasping--
+            Ah, horrified hundred.
+
+    Glass smashed to right of them,
+    Beams flew to left of them,
+    Walls gaped in front of them,
+            Shattered and sundered;
+    All round the citadel,
+    Stormed by that awful shell,
+    Plaster and brickbats fell
+    Down on their heads in storms.
+    Oh, it was worse than hell;
+    Out over prostrate forms
+            Charged all the hundred.
+
+    When shall the record fade
+    Of the quick time they made?
+            All the world wondered.
+    Greyhound or Arab steed
+    Could not excel the speed
+            Of that swift hundred.
+
+
+
+
+AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.[J]
+
+
+    Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;
+      Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;
+    Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,
+      Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!
+    Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;
+      Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,
+    Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken
+      Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.
+
+    Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;
+      Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.
+    Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,
+      Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.
+    The iron has entered your souls, and forever
+      May it brand you as craven and false to your race;
+    May the years that roll by bring oblivion never
+      To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.
+
+    Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances
+      Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,
+    Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances
+      Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.
+    Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,
+      Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,
+    Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,
+      By coating in slime every link of your chain.
+
+    But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember
+      The people and ye are no longer the same,
+    And every heart where one flickering ember
+      Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.
+    Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered
+      God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.
+    The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,
+      Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.
+
+    When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,
+      When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,
+    Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished
+      While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.
+    In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,
+      When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,
+    Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,
+      In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.
+
+
+
+
+EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.
+
+
+For enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to
+“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American
+newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of
+one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,
+if we are to believe his friends.
+
+Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed
+scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.
+
+When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event
+on the bandages.
+
+When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange
+demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his
+trombone.
+
+He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition engraven on blocks of
+ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway
+collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the
+mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after
+the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.
+
+But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few
+years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked
+up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of
+making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage
+soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the
+ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African
+substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for
+luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.
+
+Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to
+take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out
+for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of
+night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded
+its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of
+adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s
+kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.
+
+He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once
+half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and
+toothsome brown; still he had survived.
+
+But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable
+adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory
+since Stanley had left.
+
+Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by
+such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero
+in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on
+their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked
+backs.
+
+Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the
+speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an
+escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but
+for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of
+the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!
+
+
+
+
+A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.
+
+
+He was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the
+cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common
+herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations
+that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he
+wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the
+principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them
+for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of
+England,” “the President of France,” “the King of Italy,” “the Emperor
+of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.
+He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual
+appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the
+saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;
+Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on
+all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had
+planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the
+knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s
+destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy
+morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,
+sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit
+him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”
+
+
+
+
+THE LION’S LAMENTATION.
+
+
+    They are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,
+        Over the frontier they’re swarming;
+    And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,
+        But grin as if its melody were charming;
+    Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,
+    Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?
+    Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?
+        Really, the prospect is alarming.
+
+    ’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,
+        Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;
+    We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,
+        But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.
+    No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,
+    From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,
+    Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,
+        Except he be a Corydon or Carey.
+
+    Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,
+        Am I not your father and your mother?
+    Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,
+        Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.
+    Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,
+    All the dudes of London your image will caress,
+    Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,
+        And we’ll be the world to one another.
+
+    Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?
+        The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,
+    Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,
+        Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?
+    O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!
+    Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,
+    And--my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal--
+        That d--d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!
+
+
+
+
+MEMORIAL ODE
+
+TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF
+VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
+
+
+    We meet to-night to greet a name
+      Symbolical for fifty years
+    Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,
+      Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.
+    To mingle with the empty glee
+      Of laugh and cheer from English throat,
+    A new tone in this Jubilee,--
+      A strong, discordant, Irish note.
+
+    What has she done for us or ours;
+      What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;
+    That in her garlanding of flowers
+      We should conceal our Irish chain?
+    When on the dreary roadside lying
+    Were babe and mother faint and dying,
+    When heaped were nameless Irish graves,
+    When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,
+    When every blast
+    That swept the mast
+    Of fever ship was moaning, sighing
+    The story of an awful crime
+    That ringing down the aisles of Time
+    Has filled the universe with song--
+    A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong--
+    What act of mercy, gentle, human,
+        What deed of grace to prove her woman,
+        What sign gave she that Irish true man
+          Could treasure in his heart to be
+          A token of her Jubilee?
+
+        She came when but one spring had spread
+          Its buds above our dark decay,
+        Around, among, between the dead,
+          Her idle, pompous journey lay,
+        She saw a million graves, but shed
+          No tear to wash the sin away.
+        Before or since what ear hath heard
+          In all our years of dark eclipse
+        One feeble protest, or a word
+          Of pity from her queenly lips.
+        Nay, when our fearsome famine wail
+          Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,
+        And he stretched hand to save the Gael,
+          Her jealous pride returned his dole.
+    For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,
+    But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.
+
+        A faithful mother--so the bear
+          That rends the bleating lamb apart,
+        And brings it with her cubs to share,
+          Betrays a fond, maternal heart.
+    And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side
+    By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.
+    A faithful wife--from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice
+    Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert--poor Myles Joyce.[K]
+    And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,
+    At memory of the loved ones lost--butchered in this half-century’s reign.
+
+    Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims
+          of landlord wrath;
+    Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the
+          Atlantic’s lonely path;
+    Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back
+          from the scaffold’s gloom;
+    Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of
+          madhouse and union tomb;
+    A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to
+          West over every sea,
+    Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march
+          in her Jubilee.
+
+    Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,
+    Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands
+          and swear to-night
+    To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm,
+          through good and ill,
+    Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.
+    Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,
+    Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.
+
+
+
+
+AN ORANGE ORATION.
+
+
+In no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find
+the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are
+Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from
+Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German
+independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to
+the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of
+the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the
+persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as
+steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of
+the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious
+nation--Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,
+Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant
+nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so
+irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the
+voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a
+description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in
+love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they
+are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will
+find his natural place in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the
+benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent
+features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.
+
+Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in
+Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far
+penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,
+as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well
+testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything
+connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of
+superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest
+a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a
+lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence
+to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that
+England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently
+the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical
+composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a
+notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to
+shun everything green as he would the small-pox--there was only one
+color for a devout Christian to patronize--orange. God had not decorated
+the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful
+tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,
+when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose
+ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an
+Orangeman of the deepest purple dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural
+and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his
+heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie
+down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp
+to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions
+on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old
+woman who declined to shout “To h--with the Pope” at his modest request.
+
+He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,
+of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that
+awakens the enthusiasm of his class:--
+
+“Brethren--We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of
+the great, the glorious, the pious, and the--the--the Orange-headed
+William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,
+I--I--as a matter of fact I--I--get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time
+in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity
+to--to--to, in short--drink his memory--that is to say, to drink--to
+drink--to--oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes
+are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they
+swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,
+and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but
+are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their
+toes--their big toes--upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass
+this--this--this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put
+down, to a certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious
+gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls--of--of--well, they
+struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants
+won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more
+nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into
+Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has
+departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid
+believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.
+(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the
+sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and
+whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us
+and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill
+your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory
+of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;
+here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey
+with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of
+England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to
+glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of
+Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,
+bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of
+diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in
+the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free
+fights.)
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.
+
+
+    What Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world
+      Had a rule so universal as I claim?
+    What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled
+      As my ensign of destruction and of shame?
+    My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;
+      My dominion rules their bodies not alone,
+    But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,
+      And their future, as their present, is my own.
+    Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!
+    Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!
+    Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,
+    Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.
+
+    Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;
+      His tortured slaves in death at last were free.
+    But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass
+      Belongs for all eternity to me.
+    The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,
+      If he once began to worship at my shrine
+    Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,
+      Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.
+    Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,
+    Do not give the drunkard time to even think.
+    In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,
+    Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!
+
+    Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me--
+      Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;
+    Common helots struggle madly to be free,
+      Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.
+    My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,
+      On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.
+    I whet the murderer’s knife--rob mother, children, wife--
+      And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.
+    Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,
+    Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know
+    God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink
+    Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!
+
+
+
+
+CONTRARY COGNOMENS.
+
+
+    If you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,
+    And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;
+    Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,
+    And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;
+    Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;
+    Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.
+    It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,
+    That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.
+
+    Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,
+    Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;
+    Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,
+    And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;
+    Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,
+    Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;
+    Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,
+    Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.
+
+
+
+
+AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.
+
+
+    Angelina Seraphina
+      Wilhelmina Murphy,
+    See on knees here Ebenezer
+      Julius Cæsar Durphy.
+    I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken
+      To a dozen ladies,
+    Rose and Ella, Annabella,
+      And Mirella Bradys.
+    What to me now e’er can be now
+      Hippolita Flanagan?
+    Or sweet Dora Leonora
+      Otherwise O’Branagan?
+    Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe
+      Anastatia Hoolahan?
+    Or Miranda Alexandra
+      May Amanda Woolahan?
+
+    Roderigo Paul Diego
+      Burke may try his part again;
+    Or Bernardo Leonardo
+      Furey seek your heart again.
+    But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;
+      Just espouse my cause, my dear,
+    And I swear I’ll give our heir
+      A name to break your jaws, my dear!
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.
+
+
+    He slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,
+    A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;
+    And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by--
+    The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!
+
+    Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;
+    Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;
+    Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,
+    He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.
+
+    He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;
+    Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;
+    He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won--
+    He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!
+
+    His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,
+    Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.
+    A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,
+    As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.
+
+    He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,
+    He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,
+    He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;
+    And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”
+
+    His dream was changed: again he stood--and she was by his side,
+    Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;
+    Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,
+    When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!
+
+    The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;
+    Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.
+    The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,
+    And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!
+
+    He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;
+    Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.
+    He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,
+    And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!
+
+    A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;
+    He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,--but now in death!
+    The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,
+    And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK’S FOLLY.
+
+
+In a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from
+Rathmines,--which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of
+the Hibernian metropolis,--there boarded, lodged, and sent out his
+washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young
+gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in
+that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer
+walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day
+whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To
+spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose
+to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the
+clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his
+official signature.
+
+Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was
+also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his
+landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling
+Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.
+But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a
+quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his
+face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less
+susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.
+He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He
+would fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine
+weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &
+Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to
+change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut
+article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a
+countess.
+
+He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having
+time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.
+He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British
+Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being
+subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four
+dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.
+Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely
+got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium
+before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not--well, not quite
+a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly
+martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or
+the--hem--nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.
+
+“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial
+artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of--I mean as the
+raven’s wing.”
+
+Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought
+of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the
+dye.
+
+“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the
+scissors.
+
+It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed
+sort of a mustache--what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and
+odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between
+the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the
+coiffeur’s opinion.
+
+“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a
+beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”
+
+A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.
+
+“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of
+your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the
+lather-pot.
+
+They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar
+remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the
+principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed
+with his evil genius.
+
+“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as
+a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”
+
+Alas! He took the Depilatory.
+
+“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the
+curling-tongs.
+
+No, he wasn’t.
+
+“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.
+Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”
+
+Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming
+monotonous. However, he admitted that the speculator who bought his
+teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a
+fortune by the investment.
+
+“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your
+teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look
+gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.
+Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”
+
+Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic
+talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair
+dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had
+arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every
+now and then _en route_, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the
+bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He
+was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then
+another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for
+about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the
+last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,
+he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking
+hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he
+volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know
+him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s
+astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic
+personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the
+house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the
+domestic doorstep, replied emphatically, “I should rather think so!”
+upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.
+
+When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that
+Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting
+his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of
+supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below
+Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred
+gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that
+there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on
+the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested
+himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.
+
+At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning
+sob of fate, the candle went out!
+
+For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more
+composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,
+he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little
+Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his
+with envy and chagrin?
+
+He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined
+friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet
+requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his
+jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of
+Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a
+sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He
+tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not?
+He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration
+complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little
+Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber--to dream he had
+Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the
+Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when
+Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer--that last toddy, no
+doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.
+Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of
+civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out
+upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that
+made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the
+last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating
+madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable
+officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a
+square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police
+manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,
+and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with
+a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that
+he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of
+his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other
+assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he
+promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched
+forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,
+chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a
+varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded
+them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in
+wild and dripping confusion.
+
+That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an
+excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and
+there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque
+night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut
+lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his
+nose--cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird
+melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”
+
+It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his
+teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning
+over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his
+curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head
+altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction
+of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its
+growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had
+invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so
+renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of
+a walnut escritoire.
+
+Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had
+anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is
+now another’s.
+
+
+
+
+CONSTABLE X.
+
+
+    Whose walk is so stately and grand round the beat?
+    What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?
+    What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,
+    Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?
+    Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,
+    Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;
+    The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,
+    Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?
+
+    How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,
+    As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,
+    And kisses the book with a resonant smack,
+    Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.
+    Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat
+    To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,
+    And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex
+    Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.
+
+    Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours
+    When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,
+    And he, even he, that great creature, has known
+    Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.
+    And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt
+    Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.
+    For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,
+    Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.
+
+    Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,
+    But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,
+    He has even unbended to laughter and sport,
+    And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,
+    Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!
+    Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;
+    Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex
+    Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.
+
+
+    Surrounded by bottles and flagons and bowls,
+    To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,
+    Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,
+    The Devil pursued his terrible task.
+    Hatred and lust, and all the horde
+    Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,
+    And when it was brimming with fever and sin,
+    He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.
+
+    Another flask in his hand he raised
+    And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,
+    As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,
+    Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,
+    Doses of poverty, doses of crime,
+    For every region, for every clime,
+    And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb
+    As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.
+
+    And then a barrel he seized to fill
+    With grief and affliction, pain and ill;
+    Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;
+    Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;
+    Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog
+    Till God’s image became but a senseless log,
+    And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer
+    As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.
+
+    The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth
+    As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.
+    And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,
+    North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.
+    And the demon yell as each toper fell,
+    Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!
+    Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,
+    Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”
+
+
+
+
+THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.
+
+
+    Am I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?
+    Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?
+    Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?
+    Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?
+    There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,
+    The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;
+    There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,
+    For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.
+
+    Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?
+    Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?
+    Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know
+    That muscle and brain were contented below;
+    Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold
+    Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,
+    For a very small gift from our riches contents
+    The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.
+
+    But now there’s a muttering startling and strange
+    From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,
+    A really absurd and ridiculous plan
+    To ostracize gold and to dignify man;
+    The base common herd won’t submit any more
+    To a rule that their fathers found proper before,
+    And the veriest scum of the gutters invents
+    Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.
+
+
+
+
+WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.
+
+AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.
+
+
+    Once again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column
+      That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;
+    Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping
+      ’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.
+
+    Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,
+      Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;
+    And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order--
+      The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.
+
+    At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding
+      Mists and clouds of two long decades--picture visions far away,
+    Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,
+      Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.
+
+    Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,
+      And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;
+    In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;
+      They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.
+
+    See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;
+      The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,
+    And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,
+      Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.
+
+    Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping
+      With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;
+    Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending
+      The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.
+
+    Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,
+      While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,
+    For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,
+      Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;
+      Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;
+    For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,
+      Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.
+
+    Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,
+      And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,
+    The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,
+      And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.
+
+
+    Great chieftain, o’er thy silent clay
+    Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,
+    Grief knows no frontier line to-day.
+
+    Among the gifts the nation showers
+    Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours--
+    A shamrock wreath among the flowers.
+
+    A type its emerald leaflets three
+    Of thy best attributes will be--
+    Faith, Courage, and Humanity.
+
+    Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,
+    Courage that with disaster rose,
+    Mercy to brave but beaten foes.
+
+    When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine
+    In her defence with thee and thine
+    Our exiled race were found in line.
+
+    With thee we bore the storm and stress,
+    Hard-fought retreat and onward press
+    Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.
+
+    Thy eagle glances oft might scan
+    Our Celtic features in the van
+    When battle surged round Sheridan.
+
+    And never poured the crimson flood,
+    To mark where desperate valor stood,
+    But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.
+
+    So as your life-stream then we fed,
+    Where’er your own brave nation bled,
+    Our tears to-day with hers are shed.
+
+    Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,
+    Our grief now sobs with your regrets,
+    Our shamrocks fringe your violets.
+
+
+
+
+MAINE AND MAYO.
+
+
+    Six months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,
+    As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;
+    We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,
+    But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.
+    There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,
+    And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,
+    While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train
+    Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.
+
+    Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,
+    The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;
+    And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,
+    Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.
+    One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,
+    And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,
+    Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,
+    “I’m very glad to meet ye--I’m a stranger from Mayo.”
+
+    Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way
+    To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;
+    He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,
+    And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.
+    Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,
+    Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;
+    But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,
+    Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.
+
+    And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose
+    Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,
+    When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,
+    Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,
+    A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze
+    With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days--
+    “Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,
+    And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,
+    Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,
+    But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,
+    Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.
+    Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim
+    That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;
+    While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know
+    How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.
+
+
+
+
+A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.
+
+
+Sandy Row, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in
+Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its
+true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,
+the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from
+prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To
+h--with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its
+consecrated--whiskey consecrated--shore, that Papist foot would be
+carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it
+contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of
+the desecrated pavement.
+
+In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one
+Green--Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and
+immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread
+as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan
+Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in
+more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional
+anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his
+campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable
+commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,
+but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has
+suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half
+a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.
+
+In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in
+consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his
+back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,
+banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,
+blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National
+League invaders.
+
+For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners
+and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an
+assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal
+principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no
+salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.
+
+During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of
+Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a
+howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given
+musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent
+continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval
+for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor
+gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a
+short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’
+duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red
+Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached
+the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the
+influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with
+the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and
+variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in
+scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into
+which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with
+heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,
+and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;
+and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening
+lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear
+at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs
+in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted
+yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the
+thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass
+kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,
+ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that
+you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.
+
+From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there
+isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or
+symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call
+it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about
+four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.
+
+The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to
+this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this
+systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old
+boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary
+utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established
+a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been
+exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate
+measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.
+They were adopted.
+
+Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order--each
+man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander--a
+kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously
+maddening marauders!
+
+Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,
+rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.
+
+Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving
+stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.
+
+The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and
+completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.
+
+Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a
+marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long
+cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.
+
+Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord
+Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes
+and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?
+
+About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis
+commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they
+had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some
+Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his
+night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.
+
+Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly
+raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly
+perfected.
+
+It was dark,--so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent
+choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle
+rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.
+
+Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught
+a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering
+gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a
+step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled
+round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a
+hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,
+and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different
+cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical
+training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,
+paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.
+
+Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,
+like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in
+the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by
+Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of
+the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron
+spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower
+of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he
+turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the
+grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels
+off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the
+air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all
+the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon
+his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.
+
+The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new
+veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the
+Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been
+witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the
+spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of
+pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and
+the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out
+by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men
+that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with
+pickaxes and shovels.
+
+Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111
+forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a
+tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He
+thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain
+their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for
+carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with
+the contents of a tinker’s budget--why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s
+all. They have one motto he appreciates:--
+
+    Whether on the scaffold high,
+      Or in the battle’s van,
+    The fittest place for man to die
+      Is where he dies for man.
+
+That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an
+old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not
+going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.
+1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:--
+
+    Here lies the body of Billy Green,
+    As true a grand master as ever was seen,
+    But although he was green and decidedly fat,
+    He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,
+        false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a
+        lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a
+        measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell
+        cat.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.
+
+A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.
+
+
+    Down by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing
+    Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing--
+    For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:
+    Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath--
+    Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,
+    Curses in purest American; such
+    Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much
+    Room for the rest of the languages--there,
+    Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,
+    Naught but profanity ever in vogue,
+    Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.
+
+    Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether
+    God has ordained they should travel together,
+    But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,
+    Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.
+    Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,
+    Sunshine and harmony--natural growth.
+    While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,
+    Right down among us he stepped: all the while
+    Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,
+    And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,
+    Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.
+
+    Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins
+    Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;
+    Sang at our windows for all they were worth--
+    Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!
+    Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;
+    Nobody hunted the right or left bower;
+    Deserts put verdure on--one little flower
+    Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,
+    Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!
+    Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s _thurrum pogue_[L]
+    Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!
+
+
+
+
+ARAB WAR SONG.
+
+
+    Allah, il Allah! the infidel’s doom
+    Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.
+    The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,
+    And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.
+    The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,
+    Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.
+    How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!
+    Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!
+
+    The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,
+    When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,
+    But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free
+    As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;
+    And their valor will scatter his merciless bands
+    As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,
+    Their fury will break on his terrified host
+    With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.
+
+    Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride
+    He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;
+    He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast
+    As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;
+    And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array
+    Is melting before our wild charges in spray;
+    Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,
+    And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!
+
+    Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,
+    Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;
+    Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,
+    Better freedom in death than existence in chains.
+    On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,
+    See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!
+    Strike swiftly, and spare not--yon turbanless crowd
+    Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
+
+
+
+
+HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.
+
+
+If every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block
+were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and
+what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a
+completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.
+Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.
+His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his
+place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have
+them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night
+to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.
+He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his
+gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful
+jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby
+through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay
+at the parlor door by a ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to
+take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue
+of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen
+variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him
+as a signal to chaw him up--under such circumstances one don’t feel
+inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.
+
+Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of
+life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of
+the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You
+never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some
+horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to
+envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had
+with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered
+hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power
+sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in
+a sling for a fortnight afterwards.
+
+Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all
+kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded
+slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he
+believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life
+that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest
+his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring
+his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him
+half an hour to sit down.
+
+But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion
+is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has
+carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in
+a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in
+a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he
+would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he
+has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he
+thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another
+crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred
+or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and
+didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round
+about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the
+mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a
+picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked
+before--that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s
+sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking
+attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve
+his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has
+travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic
+arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that
+he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not
+to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.
+With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going
+over his half-dozen ordinary albums it is really magnificent to be able
+to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his
+remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he
+can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs
+of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.
+
+
+
+
+NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.
+
+
+I have never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.
+
+I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.
+
+There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,
+who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my
+marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my
+string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.
+
+I thirsted for his blood.
+
+I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my
+part--in fact, it took several parts of me.
+
+I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled
+my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to
+complete the structure.
+
+Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of
+boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was
+illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,--the position. Figure
+2,--one for his nob. Figure 3,--the body blow. Figure 4,--the return.
+Figure 5,--the upper cut. Figure 6,--the cross-counter.
+
+I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,
+till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of
+P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or
+whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could
+have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”
+
+But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults
+with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed
+my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered
+“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the
+bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders
+and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a
+conquering hero.
+
+At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment
+had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself
+to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me
+when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his
+head.
+
+He came.
+
+I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the
+proper figures for the various stages of the battle.
+
+I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the
+improvised ring, tied a handkerchief for a belt round my waist, and
+wanted to shake hands _a la_ Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.
+
+Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another
+figure--which happened to be me.
+
+“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,
+because it resulted in two or three for _my_ nob, and while I was trying
+to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,
+“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the
+regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something
+came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground
+with the back of my head.
+
+I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called
+“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had
+to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my
+left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill
+soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I
+sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the
+other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared
+“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp--“He won’t let me,” before there
+was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,
+and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.
+
+I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen
+to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green
+sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more
+diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.
+
+
+
+
+THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.
+
+     [Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few
+     years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,
+     who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of
+     all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a
+     student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and
+     bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from
+     a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of
+     it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that
+     crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest
+     knocked him out in one short round.]
+
+
+    There once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.--
+    Dr. Blank we shall call him--a Crichton was he;
+    Not a science or language earth ever has known
+    But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own--
+    Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany--these
+    Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;
+    Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,
+    Theology, Medicine, Strategy--pshaw!
+    They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind
+    Which left intellects minor some eras behind.
+    ’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most
+    The Dons of the College--our doctor could boast
+    An intimate knowledge of every tongue
+    Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.
+    In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;
+    For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;
+    A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,
+    Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;
+    He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;
+    Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;
+    In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;
+    In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;
+    Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,
+    And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.
+    If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,
+    The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,
+    Not his be the blame--no, the odium must rest,
+    On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;
+    Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,
+    But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.
+
+
+
+
+A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.
+
+
+I would sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under
+the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so
+dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs
+up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for
+that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there
+that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home
+are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the
+executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic
+dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a
+conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not
+be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed
+a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his
+drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies of the day. I had
+barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey
+wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a
+red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a
+miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,
+a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various
+stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied
+articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with
+thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the
+two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags
+and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to
+guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced
+to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the
+odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the
+kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every
+contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started
+homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such
+stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear
+of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the
+irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was
+blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few
+dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney
+pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a
+garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their
+native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the
+situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,
+and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude
+of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,
+vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at
+irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and
+such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to
+count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It
+would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my
+top-coat was like!
+
+
+
+
+PEGGY O’SHEA.
+
+AN IRISH SERENADE.
+
+
+            The pale moon is beaming,
+              The bright stars are gleaming.
+            Awake from thy dreaming,
+              Acushla, arise!
+            For sure the moon’s light, dear,
+            Though vivid an’ bright, dear,
+            Is but darkest night, dear,
+              Compared with your eyes.
+                    Glimmerin’,
+                    Shimmerin’,
+    Down in the river there,
+      Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,
+    See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,
+      Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        See, your own thrue love
+        Is waitin’ for you, love,
+        So waken anew, love,
+          An’ gladden my sight!
+        Don’t keep me quakin’ here,
+        Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,
+        Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,
+          All the long night;
+                  Quiverin’,
+                  Shiverin’,
+    Faith it’s Decimber, dear,
+      Freezes me, teases me--darlin’ don’t stay;
+    Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,
+      For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        This morn had you been, love,
+        With me, you’d have seen, love,
+        A new dress of green, love,
+          I bought--for, you mind,
+        But last week you said, dear,
+        You hated the red, dear,
+        So get out of bed, dear,
+          An’ let down the blind!
+                  Shyly,
+                  Slyly,
+    Creep to the window now,
+      Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,
+    Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,
+      Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        Why have you waited
+        So long, whin you stated
+        To me that you hated
+          The red of our foes?
+        While you are keepin’
+        Me here with your sleepin’
+        The color is creepin’
+          All over my nose!
+                  Face it,
+                  Chase it,
+    Meet it with bravery,
+      Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.
+    The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,
+      Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        Och, you are there now,
+        So purty and fair now,
+        I raley declare, now
+          I’m murthered outright;
+        My mouth seems like butter,
+          I hardly can mutter
+        A sintince, or utter
+          A word, love, to-night.
+                Thumpin’
+                An’ bumpin’
+    An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,
+      Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,
+    And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’
+      How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+
+
+
+THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.
+
+
+    The summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,
+    Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;
+    The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,
+    Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.
+    Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain
+    Was one poor limping creature--the embodiment of pain.
+    His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,
+    Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;
+    His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,
+    And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;
+    Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,
+    For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.
+
+    I questioned him--this blighted one--I asked him what the reason
+    Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;
+    And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling
+    Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:--
+
+    “Don’t my uniform tell you that I
+      Am of the unfortunate band,
+    Whom you see day by day passing by,
+      Never pausing a moment to stand;
+    Who, in one perpetual round,
+      Forever are marching, until
+    It seems that while one of us stays overground
+      Fate ordains he shall never be still.
+
+    “‘Tis hard when the bright golden sun
+      Smiles out from a clear azure sky,
+    To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done
+      Till his glory has gone and passed by.
+    And e’en along green country lanes,
+      ’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,
+    And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,
+      Who would care to be tramping all day?
+
+    “Then why do you wonder to hear
+      An unlucky sad mortal complain,
+    Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,
+      In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?
+    Or say, are you looking for smiles
+      From a fellow who feels on the rack,
+    After walking some twenty odd miles
+      On a path like a porcupine’s back?
+
+    “They say that the Muscovite knout,
+      On the back of a troublesome peasant,
+    When wielded by hands that are stout,
+      Is decidedly very unpleasant.
+    The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,
+      Caused aught but delightful sensations,
+    But what were their tortures of old,
+      Compared to our new innovations?
+
+    “No martyr that ever yet died
+      In those times that have long passed away,
+    Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,
+      Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.
+    My feet are denuded of skin,
+      My toes every one are disjointed,
+    For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,
+      And the most of our pavement is pointed!
+
+    “Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,
+      Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,
+    Save where an occasional flaw
+      Leaves a hole in to gather the rain--”
+
+    Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek
+      That emptied a neighboring tavern,
+    He had planted one foot on a peak,
+      While the other was lost in a cavern!
+
+    Then his language assumed such a tone--
+      And one not by any means sweeter--
+    And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan
+      That they couldn’t be put into metre.
+    So thus my sad narrative ends,
+      As I left the poor tortured one raving,
+    And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends
+      Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
+
+
+
+
+APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.
+
+
+If they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall
+have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s
+mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist
+Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the
+census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and
+on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her
+mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who
+is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage
+in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another
+ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan
+retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last
+column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical
+expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she
+filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,
+blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages
+afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be
+known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively
+on that occasion.
+
+Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary
+difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of
+them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she
+threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate, and her sitting
+weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a
+compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity
+is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,--occasionally.”
+
+If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal
+position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is
+fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on
+figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her
+appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of
+adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not
+called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or
+so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her
+record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful
+figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at
+that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years
+ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon
+and bottle-feeding.
+
+The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is
+the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it
+for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a
+commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey
+without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and
+lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the
+corner into our street on his return from a month’s absence he is the
+central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young
+Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his
+arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in
+his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.
+He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities
+until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.
+The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success
+as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal
+signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we
+call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,
+John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or
+Theodore--Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter
+fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we
+feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.
+“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or
+an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you
+short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We
+have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s
+at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,
+and--” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and
+knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be
+followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some
+of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered some refuge
+to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling
+whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be
+left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.
+
+But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a
+father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper
+should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist--there was another
+Robinson _en route_. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent
+the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came--in twos, in threes,
+in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,
+and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast
+in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt
+like Noah--only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the
+dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,
+and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers
+present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had
+been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room
+was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one
+corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the
+twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling
+with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church
+yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and
+he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?
+Send me a volume, four hundred pages, bound in morocco, forty names on
+a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two
+or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m
+ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,
+let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”
+and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson
+was at home this census time.
+
+
+
+
+NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.
+
+
+    Rank on rank they march together,
+    Through the lanes and o’er the heather,
+    And the rhythmic ringing beat
+    Of their measured swinging feet
+    Music bears in martial tone
+    To the land they call their own.
+    Happy land that proudly boasts,
+    Not coerced, unwilling hosts,
+    But around her throne can feel
+    Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,
+    Hearts whose love no bribes retain,
+    Hands that never strike in vain.
+
+    Through the fields of yellow grain,
+      Through the woods of leafy green,
+    Here and there on many a plain,
+      Are their snowy targets seen;
+    And the mountains echo back
+    From their peaks the rifles’ crack.
+
+    Freedom knows how keen of eye,
+      Firm of nerve and quick of finger,
+    Are the marksmen brave who vie
+      In the skill they freely bring her.
+    Bunker Hill and Concord tell
+    They have won their laurels well.
+
+    And should war assail our shore,
+      Still to guard it ever ready
+    As their fathers were of yore.
+      Calm, yet eager, true and steady,
+    Are the loyal ranks that play
+    But at mimic strife to-day.
+
+
+
+
+A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.
+
+
+They have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society
+rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.
+E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina
+cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.
+R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical
+instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a
+sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the
+bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of
+“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in
+which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment
+might be dangerous. It might have led to revolution, and it wouldn’t be
+logical--or geological--to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.
+
+I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific
+symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay
+ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of
+antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly
+mastodon.
+
+I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered
+during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour
+or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been
+kind enough to label them--“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land
+Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the
+Bone Age,” etc.
+
+I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement
+in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell
+what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the
+“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,
+with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been
+told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned
+not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery
+gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the
+whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be
+inspired by the sight of this--this--this ancient weapon--it is
+evidently a spear-head--which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic
+warrior of old has probably pierced many a proud invader’s breast. This
+spear-head, ladies and gentlemen--”
+
+I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty
+bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some
+repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the
+pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to
+finish a job outside!”
+
+
+
+
+JONES’S UMBRELLA.
+
+
+There has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past
+week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the
+whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the
+atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable
+character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth
+wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the
+heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses
+of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to
+have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in
+view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a
+scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar
+continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,
+principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford
+shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of
+an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,
+but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t disturb a seam in it.
+It has only one defect. Given sufficient space--say Yellowstone Park,
+and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when
+Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those
+occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left
+their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the
+umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower
+that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that
+umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the
+street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated
+arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the
+direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones
+held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones
+held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family
+quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops
+that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of
+confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and
+a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed
+and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,
+dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously
+about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It
+was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few
+shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and
+tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed
+by his coat-tails, and sat down once or twice quite unexpectedly in
+Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let
+the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He
+hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow
+restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.
+
+
+The adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has
+nearly done for Guffin.
+
+Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his
+nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows
+much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.
+
+Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is
+poetic, she is romantic--in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,
+and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion
+with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than
+soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the
+prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money--so far,
+in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts
+it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,
+in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden--Mrs.
+Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no
+place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre
+when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin blighted the future of an
+ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of
+pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite
+fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank--a sort
+of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker
+has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no
+longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future
+porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,
+and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of
+sausages.
+
+The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her
+appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a
+martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.
+They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically
+and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the
+Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most
+vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.
+would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,
+housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,
+donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a
+hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,
+stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning
+to get gray with such orders as--“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval
+noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et
+demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head
+in the straw, and wonder why he was born.
+
+But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame
+aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.
+Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French
+at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told
+him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how
+Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron
+Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter
+performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is
+ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be
+a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell
+on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find
+it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a
+half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin
+can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the
+point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch
+a tent on.
+
+Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and
+when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is
+disappointing.
+
+But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might
+be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very
+much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and
+death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was
+leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against
+her beating heart, the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes
+turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey
+unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to
+squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the
+only seat that could accommodate her--the sofa, and looked as
+consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.
+Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched
+him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself
+wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,
+and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a
+half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or
+less, he broke into rebellion.
+
+“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a
+pig in a nightmare?”
+
+“Pig!” shrieked his wife.
+
+“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.
+
+“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of
+you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”
+
+“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.
+Julia, order the carriage.”
+
+Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl
+responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.
+
+“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”
+
+“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s
+Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you
+have a rasher?”
+
+“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,
+Julia, to quit this abode of--of--this abode of--this maison du diable,
+there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal
+Guffin.
+
+“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be
+in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”
+
+“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up
+la chapeau de mon pere.”
+
+“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.
+And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your
+French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.
+You’ve upset me so much with your d----d rubbishy parley-vooing and
+moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with
+a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if
+you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know
+what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll
+put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front
+door-step all day. D----n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next
+Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll
+begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let
+folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every
+house for two miles around.”
+
+There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their
+French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and
+child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped
+themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes
+out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the
+elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived
+this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is
+so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution
+of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for
+a shutter.
+
+
+
+
+CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]
+
+A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.
+
+
+    Oh! England’s the gem of the waters,
+      The pride of the foam-crested sea!
+    And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters
+      Are always contented and free!
+    Unknown are all want and starvation;
+      Her subjects are strangers to vice;
+    And the bulwarks of this model nation
+      Are Calcraft and Governor Price!
+
+    Wherever this proud nation’s standard
+      Unfurls its red folds to the light,
+    Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard
+      Of freedom, and progress, and right.
+    Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,
+      Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;
+    Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching
+      Of Calcraft and Governor Price!
+
+    From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,
+      Wherever their footsteps have trod,
+    With the aid of the bayonet and cannon
+      They’ve planted the altar of God!
+    And the teachers of heretic notions
+      Have been silent and quiet as mice,
+    For fear they should pay their devotions
+      At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!
+
+    Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter
+      A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?
+    Or breathes there a serf who would mutter
+      A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?
+    If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over
+      With a sound word or two of advice;
+    But if Irish, he soon will discover
+      The logic of Calcraft and Price!
+
+    Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven
+      You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,
+    When, horror! you might have been given
+      A Republican birthright to own!
+    Thank God, that your blood is untainted,
+      You’re subjects of England--how nice!--
+    You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted
+      With Calcraft or Governor Price!
+
+
+
+
+ENTITLED TO A RAISE.
+
+SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.
+
+
+    This is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,
+    To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;
+    When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,
+    And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.
+    And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,
+    Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,
+    His blood was cool--(discipline’s rule)--he made no moan, so he
+    Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.
+
+    This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,
+    But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,
+    He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,
+    And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.
+    He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,
+    He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;
+    He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,
+    So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?
+
+    And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;
+    With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;
+    Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,
+    But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.
+    He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,
+    And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;
+    He is silly, he is loyal,--he is all a Sub should be,
+    With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.
+
+
+
+
+THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.
+
+THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.
+
+
+    John Thompson was a postman who
+      Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,
+    And though not deeply read, ’tis true,
+      Was still a Man of Letters.
+
+    He paid attention to one Kate
+      Maria Julia Jervis,
+    But she did not appreciate
+      John Thompson’s Civil Service.
+
+    Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,
+      Nor let my love-suit fail,
+    Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,
+      And don’t Despatch this Mail.”
+
+    But she replied, in accents grave,
+      “I love you not--decamp!”
+    And when he spoke again--she gave
+      Her foot an Extra Stamp.
+
+    And cried, “My anger you awake,
+      Your speech on insult borders,
+    I’m poor, but I would scorn to take
+      Your vile Post-office Orders.”
+
+    Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,
+      And moaned in accents shivery,
+    “Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,
+      Pray pardon its Delivery.”
+
+    He left the room with footsteps slow,
+      A bitter lesson taught,
+    And then to counteract the blow,
+      A pillar-box he sought.
+
+    He felt how foolish was the tact
+      In courtship he had boasted,
+    And recognized the solemn fact
+      That he was badly Posted.
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.
+
+
+    The cobbler’s always cheerful, though
+      His path of life be crost,
+    He does not tear his hair in woe,
+      Whene’er his all is lost.
+
+    He welts a lot, but not the wife
+      With whom his lot is cast;
+    She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,
+      Still faithful to the last.
+
+    Onward his motto, aye, he strives
+      To grasp some other feat,
+    And in the dullest times contrives
+      Somehow to make ends meet.
+
+    The world may smite him without cause,
+      He never shuns its whacks,
+    And seldom grumbles at the laws
+      That regulate his tax.
+
+    We know but little of the good
+      His many acts reveal--
+    Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would
+      Their understandings heal.
+
+    And a much higher motive yet
+      His generous heart controls,
+    You would not see that saint forget
+      Their perishable souls.
+
+
+
+
+A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.
+
+
+The financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest
+shanty of Jones, in our street.
+
+“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at
+breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with
+the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the
+domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones
+works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t
+say less; he was afraid to say more.
+
+“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”
+
+Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour
+in question.
+
+“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished
+to know where you spent your evening.”
+
+“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a
+kind of a description of--you don’t understand these things, Maria, but
+we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I
+thought--that is, we thought--a few of us thought, you know--a whole lot
+of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand--to--to
+avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”
+
+“Oh, you consulted, then?”
+
+“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we
+decided on a whole lot of things.”
+
+“What time did you decide on breaking up?”
+
+“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish
+financiers--Baron Rothschild, and--and the rest of the Rothschilds, and
+the chief rabbis--and--and--and--all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve
+been working the oracle--and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here
+Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining
+matters as lucidly as was necessary.
+
+“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the
+almshouse before you die, at the rate--the poor rate--you’re going on.
+What else?”
+
+“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the
+monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal
+of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six
+per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things
+have gone so far that, that--”
+
+“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took
+your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the
+scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that
+you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about
+the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the
+proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled
+‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in
+the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians
+and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,
+the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat down in the coal scuttle,
+and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed
+some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried
+to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;
+and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your
+coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,
+you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red
+hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I
+have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for
+five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any
+longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed
+commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a
+remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it
+is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in
+a quiet kitchen in South Boston.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.
+
+
+    Heigho for the morning, murky and dark,
+      When, heedless of threatening cloud,
+    I ventured to visit the green College park,
+      And mingled along with the crowd.
+    I am almost now on insanity’s brink,
+      And this I attribute to
+    Either a fairy attired in pink
+      Or an angel whose robe was blue.
+
+    The world considered my heart was flint,
+      And futile were womanly wiles--
+    Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,
+      Glances and glittering smiles.
+    I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,
+      My journey of life to go through,
+    But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,
+      To say nothing of beauty in blue.
+
+    I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,
+      Bachelor’s buttons and fare;
+    And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife
+      That Benedicts weepingly share.
+    But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink
+      To join the Hymeneal crew,
+    If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink
+      Or a lovely commander in blue.
+
+    I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place
+      For frivolous chatter and talk;
+    I was interested in every race,
+      Jump and hurdle and walk;
+    Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think--
+      Of course it can hardly be true--
+    That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,
+      And the mile by a stayer in blue.
+
+    It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,
+      For I mean in futurity’s days
+    When I go to races to cover my eyes
+      With glasses to temper my gaze,
+    Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink
+      Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,
+    Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink
+      Or equally dangerous blue.
+
+
+
+
+A MUSICAL REVENGE.
+
+
+I’m sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean
+of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is
+oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to
+sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed
+with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,
+and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with
+forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly
+residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly
+utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to
+undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be
+a welcome change.
+
+But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.
+For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers
+of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the
+trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his
+frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a
+fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations
+on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had _one_ night from me. They
+won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.
+
+I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the
+melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of
+his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my
+cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the
+tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising
+for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed
+successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured
+the presence of a fife and drum--principally drum--band from a Grand
+Army post.
+
+The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time
+all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to
+quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants
+of the disturbed district.
+
+But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the
+perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,
+till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or
+instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering
+locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,
+as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each
+artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The
+bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if
+all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s
+interference with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”
+with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled
+like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had
+never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The
+melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band
+wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of
+its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice
+assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of
+the occasion.
+
+It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division
+of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at
+suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand
+finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within
+half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a
+lifetime.
+
+If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them
+another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.
+
+
+
+
+A LIAR LAID OUT.
+
+
+We have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who
+certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give
+weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London
+_Times_ in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The
+whoppers that spreader of lies and light can tell would raise the hair
+on the head of an Egyptian mummy.
+
+But he met his match last week.
+
+I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an
+acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of
+course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing
+and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my
+friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that
+he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the
+truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in
+him--very much in him--it’s impossible to get it out of him.
+
+I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I
+regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future
+member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all
+there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that
+Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured
+it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the
+Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.
+
+The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a
+strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen
+from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him
+at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden
+legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was
+smoking it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of
+teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the
+regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own
+gums. He showed it to Dipps.
+
+I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He
+exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured
+out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of
+the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,
+a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express
+purpose of making that stick.
+
+The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had
+another walking-stick at home--made out of the thigh bone of the
+engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to
+carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and
+would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising
+from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler
+in cold weather to warm himself.
+
+Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be
+put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He
+called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the
+centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a
+diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was
+worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic
+shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It had passed into Dipps’s
+hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first
+met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel
+Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say
+anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if
+you’re able.”
+
+Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t
+squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary--it was
+almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a
+companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the
+assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been
+divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,
+and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.
+
+“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom
+Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent
+of the New York _Herald_ Central African tourist pumped that saline
+particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling
+in the interest which it must inspire.”
+
+“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,
+that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic
+treasure?”
+
+“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the
+Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he
+embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley
+_didn’t_ shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.”
+
+
+
+
+MULROONEY.--A TROOPER’S TALE.
+
+
+    We were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;
+    When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;
+    When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades
+    Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.
+    We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;
+    Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung--
+    For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,
+    The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!
+
+    Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;
+    The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;
+    His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;
+    His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.
+    So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,
+    Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;
+    Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try
+    To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.”
+
+    Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,
+    His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;
+    The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,
+    The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;
+    His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command--
+    A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;
+    But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why
+    Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”
+
+    The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led
+    Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;
+    But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,
+    A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!
+    Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair--
+    One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,
+    Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:
+    “By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!”
+
+    But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,
+    There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;
+    The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,
+    As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!
+    One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,
+    A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,
+    And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,
+    A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”
+
+    Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,
+    The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,
+    And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,
+    Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.
+    The captain played his cards with skill--his triumph almost came;
+    But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;
+    And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh
+    Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish newspapers, was
+debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich comic cartoons in
+_Pat_, the _Weekly News_, the _Weekly Freeman_, and _United Ireland_.
+
+[B] Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the Ribbon or
+Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.
+
+[C] During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the Speaker
+or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside for
+twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the
+course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every
+five minutes or so.
+
+[D] Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester, England, for
+their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy, two Fenian
+leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies being refused
+to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the occasion of a
+demonstration.
+
+[E] On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and Michael
+Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two Fenian
+leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into effect
+it was not believed that the first political execution since that of
+Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old Swan
+Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger
+brought news of the execution instead.
+
+[F] Allen--nineteen years old.
+
+[G] O’Brien--A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s Irish
+Brigade.
+
+[H] Larkin--An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.
+
+[I] At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on Jan.
+23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished themselves
+by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.
+
+[J] In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Ireland. On the
+morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses above was found
+posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of Ireland. The
+poem had previously appeared in an American paper.
+
+[K] A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after he had
+been executed.
+
+[L] Give me a kiss.
+
+[M] Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a British
+jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be
+remembered for years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62180 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester

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-Title: An Irish Crazy-Quilt

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-Author: Arthur M. Forrester

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-

-<p class="c">

-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="317" height="500" alt="" />

-</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p>

-

-<h1><span class="smcap">An Irish Crazy-Quilt.</span></h1>

-

-<p class="c">SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO

-SONG AND STORY.<br /><br /><br /><small>BY</small><br />

-ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br /><br />

-

-BOSTON:<br />

-ALFRED MUDGE &amp; SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.<br />

-1891.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>

-

-<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Copyright,<br />

-1890,<br />

-By</span> ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br />

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span>&nbsp;<br /><br /><br />

-

-TO THE<br />

-<br />

-“FELONS” OF IRELAND,<br />

-<br />

-THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,<br />

-<br />

-<span class="smcap">Who have been Exiled or Imprisoned or Executed</span><br />

-<br />

-<span class="smcap">Because they Loved their Native Land more than<br />

-Home or Liberty or Life</span>,<br />

-<br />

-<span class="eng">This Volume</span><br />

-<br />

-IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>

-

-<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>

-

-<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">

-<tr><th colspan="2">SONGS AND BALLADS.</th></tr>

-

-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="rt"><span class="smcap"><small>Page.</small></span></td></tr>

-

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE">The Church of Ballymore</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_7">7</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_OLD_BOREEN">The Old Boreen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_9">9</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE">The Irish Schoolhouse</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_11">11</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PAT_MURPHYS_COWS">Pat Murphy’s Cows</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_13">13</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FATHER_TOM_MALONE">Father Tom Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_16">16</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#YOU_CAN_GUESS">You Can Guess</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_18">18</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONLY">Only!</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_19">19</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL">Songs of Innisfail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_20">20</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE">The Lord of Kenmare</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_32">32</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE">An Old Irish Tune</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_39">39</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_45">45</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY">Ivan Petrokoffsky</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_52">52</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_EMPERORS_RING">The Emperor’s Ring</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_54">54</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BLACK_LORIS">Black Loris</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_RED-HEART_DAISY">The Red Heart Daisy</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_67">67</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING">The Tide is Turning</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_OWN_AGAIN">Our Own Again</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_70">70</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL">The Tale of a Tail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_71">71</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS">The Seasick Sub-Commissioners</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_75">75</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY">Clare Constabulary Caione</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_77">77</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX">Clause Twenty-six</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_78">78</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JENKINS_M_P">Jenkins, M. P.</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_80">80</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THADY_MALONE">Thady Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_81">81</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RORYS_REVERIE">Rory’s Reverie</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_83">83</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE">Our Land Shall be Free</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_102">102</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND">The Felons of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_111">111</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION">An Official Valuation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER">A Bewildered Boycotter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION">A Complaint of Coercion</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONEILLS_ADDRESS">O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FENIANS_DREAM">The Fenian’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_119">119</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT">The Speaker’s Complaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ERIN_MACHREE_1798">Erin Machree</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_128">128</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOURS_WISH">Balfour’s Wish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_CAUSE">Our Cause</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_136">136</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SERVED_HIM_RIGHT">Served Him Right</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RAPPAREE_SONG">Rapparee Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND">To the Landlords of Ireland</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_141">141</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOUR_REJOICES">Balfour Rejoices</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_BRIGADE">The Irish Brigade</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_149">149</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST">Faithful to the Last</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_156">156</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG">Fenian Battle Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_158">158</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS">The Grave of the Martyrs</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_159">159</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#DEATHS_VICTORY">Death’s Victory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_160">160</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG">The Green Flag at Fredericksburg</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_161">161</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND">The Flag of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY">Hurrah for Liberty</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_163">163</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MESSENGER">The Messenger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_165">165</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN">John Bull’s Appeal</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_175">175</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB">The Story of a Bomb</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_177">177</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM">Avenging, Though Dim</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885">Christmas Dirge of London Police</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885">Ireland’s Prayer</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR">John Bull’s New Year</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_183">183</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#READY_AND_STEADY">Ready and Steady</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI">The Charge of the Guards</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_193">193</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES">An Address to Slaves</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_195">195</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION">The Lion’s Lamentation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_200">200</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MEMORIAL_ODE">Memorial Ode to Irish Dead</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_202">202</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL">Song of King Alcohol</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_209">209</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONTRARY_COGNOMENS">Contrary Cognomens</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_210">210</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING">An Æsthetic Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_211">211</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM">The Drunkard’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_212">212</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONSTABLE_X">Constable X</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_222">222</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LUCIFERS_LABORATORY">Lucifer’s Laboratory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_223">223</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN">The Monopolist’s Moan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_224">224</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS">With the Grand Army Veterans</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_225">225</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE">The Irish Soldier at Grant’s Grave</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_228">228</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MAINE_AND_MAYO">Maine and Mayo</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_229">229</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE">The Priest with the Brogue</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_238">238</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ARAB_WAR_SONG">Arab War Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_240">240</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY">The Linguist of the Liffey</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_247">247</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PEGGY_OSHEA">Peggy O’Shea</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_250">250</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT">The Boston Carrier’s Plaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN">New England’s Marksmen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_260">260</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE">Calcraft and Price</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_270">270</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE">Entitled to a Raise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_272">272</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_POSTMANS_WOOING">The Postman’s Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_273">273</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER">Sonnets to a Shoemaker</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_275">275</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS">At the College Sports</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_278">278</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE">Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_286">286</a></td></tr>

-

-<tr><th colspan="2">STORIES AND SKETCHES.</th></tr>

-

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TAMING_A_TIGER">Taming a Tiger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_22">22</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RYANS_REVENGE">Ryan’s Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_34">34</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE">A Seditious Slide</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_47">47</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT">Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE">A Double Surprise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_86">86</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PHILIPSONS_PARTY">Philipson’s Party</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_103">103</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS">That Traitor Timmins</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_129">129</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER">A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_144">144</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SNOOKS">Snooks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_151">151</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS">Caledonian Candlesticks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_152">152</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_TYPICAL_TRIAL">A Typical Trial</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED">Why Smithers Resigned</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_186">186</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER">Exploits of an Irish Reporter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_197">197</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED">A Political Lesson Spoiled</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_199">199</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ORANGE_ORATION">An Orange Oration</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_205">205</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FREDERICKS_FOLLY">Frederick’s Folly</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_215">215</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH">A Sandy Row Skirmish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_232">232</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK">Hobbies in Our Block</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_241">241</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN">Not a John L. Sullivan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_244">244</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA">A Windy Day at Cabra</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_248">248</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS">Apropos of the Census</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN">A Mixed Antiquarian</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_261">261</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JONESS_UMBRELLA">Jones’s Umbrella</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_263">263</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA">Lessons in the French Drama</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_265">265</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS">A Commercial Crisis</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_276">276</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MUSICAL_REVENGE">A Musical Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_280">280</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_LIAR_LAID_OUT">A Liar Laid Out</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_282">282</a></td></tr>

-</table>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>

-

-<h1>AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.</h1>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE" id="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE"></a>THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Though the roof above its worshippers was low,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s&mdash;by the feet of monarchs trod&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With their monumental genius and their lore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In accents that we might not understand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">As to think his words not heaven’s own command!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Each little modest slab and grassy mound;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Desolation was about me, sad and sore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I am proud of our cathedrals&mdash;they are emblems of our love<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The devil should not have them as his own!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Their splendor has inspired me&mdash;but amidst it all I prayed<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_OLD_BOREEN" id="THE_OLD_BOREEN"></a>THE OLD BOREEN.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">E</span>MBROIDERED with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It laughed with my joy&mdash;in my moments of sadness<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">What solace I found in its pitying shade.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With sickness and want I have earned only scars;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Life’s twilight is nearing&mdash;its day disappearing&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE" id="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE"></a>AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">U</span>PON the rugged ladder rungs&mdash;whose pinnacle is Fame&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Perhaps&mdash;and yet ’tis hard to think&mdash;our boastful modern school<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would scorn his simple ways&mdash;and in the rapid march of mind<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS" id="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS"></a>PAT MURPHY’S COWS.</h2>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary

-Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to

-the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited

-roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat

-Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less

-than eleven children.]</p></div>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>N a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole&mdash;a pair of Kerry cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="FATHER_TOM_MALONE" id="FATHER_TOM_MALONE"></a>FATHER TOM MALONE.<br /><br />

-<small>A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>AIR white as innocence, that crowned<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A gentle face which never frowned;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lips framed to counsel and to bless;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A reflex of our native skies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through which now tears, now sunshine shone&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There you have Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He bade the infant at its birth<br /></span>

-<span class="i0"><i>Cead mille failthe</i> to the earth;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With friendly hand he guided youth<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Along the thorny track of truth;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The dying felt, yet knew not why,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nearer to Heaven when he was by&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For, sure, the angels at God’s throne<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Were friends of Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">For us, poor simple sons of toil<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our one ambition, sole content,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not to be backward with the rent;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our one absorbing, constant fear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The agent’s visits twice a year;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We had, our hardships to atone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The love of Father Tom Malone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">One season failed. The dull earth slept.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Despite of ceaseless vigil kept<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For sign of crop, day after day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To coax it from the sullen clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The tubers rotted&mdash;then, oh, shame!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We&mdash;’twas the last time ever known&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We had, from fruitful years before,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Garnered with care a frugal store;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What were our babes to live upon?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We had no seed for coming spring,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nor faintest hope to which to cling;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We would have starved without a moan,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When out spoke Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His voice, so flute-like in the past,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“God’s wondrous love doth not intend<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hundreds to starve that one may spend;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0"><i>That</i> from mild Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And when the landlord with a force<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of English soldiers, foot and horse,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Came down and direst vengeance swore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who met him at the cabin door?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who reasoned first and then defied<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The thief in all his power and pride?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who won the poor man’s fight alone?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">So, when you point to heroes’ scars,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And boast their prowess in the wars,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Give one small meed of praise, at least,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To this poor modest Irish priest.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No laurel wreath was twined for him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But pulses throb and eyelids dim<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="YOU_CAN_GUESS" id="YOU_CAN_GUESS"></a>YOU CAN GUESS.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I first met my fate,&mdash;what it was you can guess.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It was under the shade of its bordering trees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And yet it was but a short question to ask.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the question was this&mdash;but I’m sure you can guess.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="ONLY" id="ONLY"></a>ONLY!</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NLY a cabin, thatched and gray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Only a rose-twined door,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Only a barefooted child at play<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On only an earthern floor.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Only a little brain&mdash;not wise<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For even a head so small,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And that is the reason he bitterly cries<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For leaving his home&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Only the thought of her girlhood there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And her happier days as wife,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have endeared them to her for life;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What is the weeping woman’s cause?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Why are her accents gall?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What does she know of our intricate laws?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">It was only a hut&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That man with the eyelids dim,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For sinewy serfs like him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For his heart such a wondrous thrall?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He was born in the place&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The years have gone, and the worn-out pair<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Sleep under the stranger’s clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the weeping child with the curly hair<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Is a brave, strong man to-day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet still he thinks of the olden land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And prays for her tyrant’s fall,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And longs to be one of some chosen band,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With only a chance&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL" id="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL"></a>SONGS OF INNISFAIL.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE the Austral river rushes<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through feathery heath and bushes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through its gurgles and its gushes<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">You may hear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To your wonder and surprise,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sweet melodies arise<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You have heard ’neath other skies<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Low and clear.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yes! within the gold land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strange to you and cold land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Voices from the old land<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Swell upon the gale<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lyrics of the story,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lit with flames of glory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Dimmed with pages gory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Where Mississippi leaping<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through valleys fair, is sweeping<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">To the sea,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From the fields of nodding grain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On some mountain path or plain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Rings a stirring old refrain<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Fresh and free.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yes! where’er we wander<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Irish hearts will ponder<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">O’er our land, and fonder<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Throb with ev’ry tale<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of the home that bore us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till the new skies o’er us<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Echo with our chorus<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the spray-foam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whereso’er we may roam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Thoughts of far-away home<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Linger still,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in dreams we see again<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Babbling stream and silent glen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Forest green and lonely fen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Vale and hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yes! our hearts’ devotion<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Flies across the ocean,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While with deep emotion<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Sternest features pale,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As around us stealing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Softened by sad feeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through the air are pealing<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="TAMING_A_TIGER" id="TAMING_A_TIGER"></a>TAMING A TIGER.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,

-Dublin,&mdash;five of us&mdash;a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.</p>

-

-<p>There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the

-representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay

-amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,

-who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke &amp; Brassey; Tim

-Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing

-stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a

-distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical

-jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome

-kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 <small>A.M.</small> train

-south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance

-of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was

-attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid

-indi<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span>vidual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally

-irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.</p>

-

-<p>“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the

-newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way

-from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks

-we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would

-ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a

-little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him

-out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of

-the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take

-whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me

-see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick

-Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this

-Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and

-Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each

-of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,

-and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,

-will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he

-must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my

-sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What

-do you say, boys?”</p>

-

-<p>Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand

-in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the

-major into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed

-rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the

-compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in

-Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping

-Harry,&mdash;delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble

-servant).</p>

-

-<p>At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all

-manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished

-off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to

-the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,

-swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had

-pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout

-to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe

-Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,

-and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.</p>

-

-<p>He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!

-the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now

-the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.</p>

-

-<p>He had killed a panther with his naked hands&mdash;with one naked hand, in

-fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in

-desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its

-tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s

-spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and

-he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior

-recesses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> He tore its heart out, sir,&mdash;its heart,&mdash;and an assortment of

-lungs and ribs and other things.</p>

-

-<p>He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello

-crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his

-waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He

-never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.</p>

-

-<p>At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,

-and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we

-managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in

-Ireland.</p>

-

-<p>“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that&mdash;down

-in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a

-fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled

-twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized

-atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing

-dumb, my name’s not Boomerang&mdash;Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”</p>

-

-<p>“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the

-peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,

-for instance.”</p>

-

-<p>“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach

-of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,&mdash;flay him alive,

-sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember

-Joe Boomerang&mdash;fighting Joe&mdash;as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild

-elephants! I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,

-the&mdash;the&mdash;by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”</p>

-

-<p>Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,

-and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am

-the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your

-abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally

-concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I

-suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will

-oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an

-officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you

-have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”</p>

-

-<p>We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform

-and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like

-an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but

-his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I

-cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D&mdash;&mdash; me, if I will!”</p>

-

-<p>“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not

-a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with

-perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for

-you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with

-pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him

-in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the

-bullet? People said, you know,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span> that it was the doctors and not Davitt

-that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.</p>

-

-<p>The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man

-in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man

-already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not

-going to be killed&mdash;I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not

-going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as

-if they were snipe.”</p>

-

-<p>“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of

-the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith

-did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting

-Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively

-blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for

-the honor of the service.”</p>

-

-<p>“The service be d&mdash;&mdash;d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a

-kaleidoscope of colors&mdash;red, purple, blue, yellow, and white&mdash;were

-flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like

-this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a

-different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his

-courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead

-of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had

-ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,

-sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them

-that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a light<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span>ning glance

-from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and

-winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar

-and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;

-and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb

-from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”</p>

-

-<p>Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,

-and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a

-cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.

-I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I

-shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that

-I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you

-must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you

-to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The

-prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had

-disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.

-Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone

-got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed

-to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”</p>

-

-<p>“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,

-he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he

-has always chosen that so far.”</p>

-

-<p>“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such

-horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing

-outright.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”</p>

-

-<p>“Has he&mdash;has he&mdash;I’m not afraid, you know&mdash;ha! ha! Joe Boomerang

-afraid&mdash;capital joke&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;has he killed anybody?”</p>

-

-<p>“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him

-personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,

-matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The

-major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I

-continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both

-pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.

-You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It

-will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,

-but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere

-with my duty.”</p>

-

-<p>“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that&mdash;that&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the

-best. I know an undertaker in Cork&mdash;a decent sort of a chap. We can

-arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the

-first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills

-you.”</p>

-

-<p>“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me

-sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what

-alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I

-remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major

-managed to get hold of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span> enough of his voice to inquire how it came to

-pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as

-duelling.</p>

-

-<p>“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western

-institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in

-deference to Yankee ideas.”</p>

-

-<p>“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we

-would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang

-of&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the

-car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife

-clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish

-determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter

-collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.

-“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot

-that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and

-glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of

-America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to

-the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m

-bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the

-Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I

-squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the

-blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,

-sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a

-Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span>snub-nosed,

-curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.

-Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena

-from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge

-forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that

-seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made

-a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,

-but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.</p>

-

-<p>When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told

-him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,

-having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed

-staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered

-that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for

-his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at

-the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to

-Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.</p>

-

-<p>“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that

-gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to

-Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him

-this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he

-booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’

-thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since

-the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at

-the ould cross roads.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span>” A few days after I read this announcement in the

-Dublin <i>Gazette</i>: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the

-humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident

-magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly

-return to Bengal.”</p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE" id="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE"></a>THE LORD OF KENMARE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Were&mdash;the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="RYANS_REVENGE" id="RYANS_REVENGE"></a>RYAN’S REVENGE.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">D</span>URING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most

-exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement

-articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the

-post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,

-for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect

-“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This

-peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional

-association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was

-popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been

-introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain

-refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,

-Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the

-government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the

-indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions

-that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,

-subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span> adopt his invention when they

-had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the

-<i>status quo</i> was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,

-English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his

-reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office

-pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that

-nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.</p>

-

-<p>The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that

-Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical

-visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence

-in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of

-his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted

-county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a

-Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than

-turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof

-that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.

-So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.</p>

-

-<p>For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to

-get muddled,&mdash;his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the

-spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented <i>billet-doux</i> from

-that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue

-envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna

-to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an

-envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes

-being found to contain nothing at all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with

-the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy

-for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent

-sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that

-euphonious cognomen.</p>

-

-<p>Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state

-indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw

-a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You

-couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.

-If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or

-individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was

-a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the

-shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy

-for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress

-suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good

-harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were

-thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of

-as a blight among the Murphys.</p>

-

-<p>So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed

-to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,

-it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,

-the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.</p>

-

-<p>But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central

-bureau of the postal pimpdom. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span> took the clan Murphy into his

-confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy

-in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the

-fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went

-forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many

-letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could

-put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,&mdash;the crops, the

-weather, the price of provisions,&mdash;anything, in fact, or nothing at all.

-The language was of minor importance,&mdash;Irish, however, preferred,&mdash;and

-the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the

-cause.</p>

-

-<p>Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.</p>

-

-<p>The first day of the interception of <i>the</i> Murphy’s letters, three bags

-full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.</p>

-

-<p>The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.</p>

-

-<p>The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s

-private sanctum with spare bags.</p>

-

-<p>The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.</p>

-

-<p>The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy

-letters on the stairs.</p>

-

-<p>Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.</p>

-

-<p>But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking

-Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters

-for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the

-grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to

-the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or

-hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the

-general chaos.</p>

-

-<p>The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service

-Corps, and from 8 <small>A.M.</small> till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were

-blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs

-and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated

-protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for

-Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.</p>

-

-<p>Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War

-Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey

-quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the

-intercepted epistles in.</p>

-

-<p>Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,&mdash;the order to

-overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would

-have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the

-task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was

-relieved.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy

-correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed

-to the treacherous waves.</p>

-

-<p>To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up

-a thousand leagues from land,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span> on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir

-William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a

-week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the

-gout.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE" id="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE"></a>AN OLD IRISH TUNE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And over the dreams of the slumberers cast<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The magical spell of a voice from the past;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Once again in old homes we were children at play,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But never a ball on its death-mission sped;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It linked with its strains ere they melted away<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The air seemed to throb with invisible tears<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="HARVEY_DUFF" id="HARVEY_DUFF"></a>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible

-to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the

-different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes

-or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span> of Hamelin.

-“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;

-“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment

-before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”

-will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the

-living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself

-a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles

-of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five

-minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because

-he has been killed in the lump.</p>

-

-<p>But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers

-existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is

-none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced

-upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished

-in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican

-convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a

-trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling

-outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but

-if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain

-tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,

-dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,

-hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take

-a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of

-mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will

-amply repay the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span> journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be

-anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well

-to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest

-you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky

-enough to go to hospital.</p>

-

-<p>Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The

-performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.</p>

-

-<p>How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its

-composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated

-with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the

-authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories

-and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.</p>

-

-<p>I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”</p>

-

-<p>There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server

-and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular

-“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled

-in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place

-as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally

-difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the

-melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has

-been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to

-submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied

-experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”

-for thirty seconds.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told

-that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,

-returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor

-jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious

-to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time

-to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the

-back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a

-knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the

-harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in

-the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.</p>

-

-<p>In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed

-little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an

-escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,

-and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the

-aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small

-and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle

-something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before

-the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s

-Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and

-bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,

-without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old

-rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen

-might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their

-mouths and their souls in their boots,&mdash;that is, if an Irish policeman

-has either a heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard

-both along with their civilian clothes.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>

-

-<p>A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the

-dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic

-entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him

-in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He

-was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer

-was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were

-attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,

-pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man

-aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the

-atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to

-capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.

-Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst

-penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade

-of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that

-strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”

-and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an

-avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told

-Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the

-passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the

-ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,

-twirling and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span> twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon

-the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the

-atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when

-the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the

-crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering

-at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he

-could recover his breath.</p>

-

-<p>I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its

-obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the

-ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and

-it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines

-to that immaculate body:&mdash;</p>

-

-<h3>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h3>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">M</span>Y load of woes is hard to bear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’m losing flesh with dark despair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the top of my head is so awfully bare<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would you the cause be after knowing<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That makes me the baldest peeler going,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">If I’ve not heard you often enough,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I was once with a bailiff serving writs,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the mob malafoostered me for him.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But the case that circles my brain is thick,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When duty has called me miles away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I couldn’t coax dry bread and water<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From father or son, from mother or daughter,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But I always could reckon on more than enough<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Of you I get more than <i>quantum suff</i>,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">And would to the Lord I could collar the muff<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To go alone to rebel Clare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And with a reckless spirit dare<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To take a farm that’s vacant there.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I know the peasants bold would scatter<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My four bones to the wind&mdash;no matter;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They’d wake me decent&mdash;no heart so tough<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">As I think that my soul will depart in a huff<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE" id="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE"></a>A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and

-Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy

-has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have

-been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot

-of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged

-Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly

-thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts

-on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at

-present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and

-happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.</p>

-

-<p>I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings

-in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never

-did any<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span>thing so low or ignoble as to <i>work</i> for their country, and are,

-consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big

-pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the

-refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by

-jingo when we do!”</p>

-

-<p>On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and

-unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the

-heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty

-miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing

-triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the

-Milky Way.</p>

-

-<p>Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of

-an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few

-front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.</p>

-

-<p>I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty

-feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous

-juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving

-that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t

-have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of

-Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to

-either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been

-organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a

-National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through

-my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.</p>

-

-<p>But it is strange how the misfortunes of others recon<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span>cile us to our

-own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my

-soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw

-approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair

-Araminta Higgins.</p>

-

-<p>They were mashing.</p>

-

-<p>He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,

-preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his

-suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,

-and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.</p>

-

-<p>“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true

-to thee as&mdash;as&mdash;as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.

-I am thine&mdash;thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”</p>

-

-<p>At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet

-and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward

-a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane

-observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he

-supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish

-blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a

-coarse laugh.</p>

-

-<p>They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign

-spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two

-prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the

-direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were

-energetically discussing the Na<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span>tional League campaign in Ulster. They

-neared the precipice&mdash;I mean the slide.</p>

-

-<p>“This Parnellite invasion will fail&mdash;utterly fail&mdash;if we remain firm,”

-said the taller of the two, Col. K&mdash;H&mdash;. “Unity and perseverance must be

-our watchwords. United we stand&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head

-rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his

-desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the

-soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted

-energies.</p>

-

-<p>The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known

-attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to

-discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.

-looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in

-every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were

-veritable embodiments of <i>fieri-facias</i>; his stiff, angular collar had

-the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he

-carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and

-processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping

-briskly to destruction.</p>

-

-<p>Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a

-bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.</p>

-

-<p>They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that

-atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal

-documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored

-ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got

-home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking

-for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a

-bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was

-filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.</p>

-

-<p>When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was

-continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the

-North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his

-reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done

-the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”</p>

-

-<p>And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was

-brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the

-policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault

-over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly

-round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the

-policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had

-got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had

-been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and

-constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.</p>

-

-<p>But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we

-going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls

-and chasms to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span> be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,

-and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?

-It’s awful!</p>

-

-<h2><a name="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY" id="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY"></a>IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>VAN Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is a private&mdash;nothing more;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">(So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of dying for his country to be happy or content.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_EMPERORS_RING" id="THE_EMPERORS_RING"></a>THE EMPEROR’S RING.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The sentinel checks his monotonous round.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Fresh horse and new pistols&mdash;some phrases of warning,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Out, out through the forests&mdash;on, on o’er the meadows,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While castle and cabin and hamlet and town<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor ocean a sheltering island so far<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We Russians are brave, but we only are human;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We cower at a power it is death to offend,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="BLACK_LORIS" id="BLACK_LORIS"></a>BLACK LORIS.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>PURS jingle and lances shine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A hundred brave horsemen in line;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For why should true hearts repine?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The pathway is level and balmy the air,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The sun has but reached its meridian height,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ten heroes fight back to back,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A wolf from the howling pack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The ten are scattered; they seem to be<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like derelict spars in an angry sea.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But never a Cossack was known to yield<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The waves are engulphing them one by one!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">But two remain back to back!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His comrade sinks down with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Black Loris is fighting alone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And his arms as heavy as stone.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For answer he sabres the chief of the band.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But his arm is shivered in twain&mdash;he feels<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The earth swim round him&mdash;he gasps, he reels,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Black Loris is not alone!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No tears for the ninety-nine,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The nation’s heart is their shrine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the one man left of the line!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The strength and glory of Russia depart,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of dashing Loris who fought so well,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And for years to come, when trotting along<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ural and Don, men will sing this song&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">“The One and the Ninety-Nine!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT" id="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT"></a>WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?</h2>

-

-<h3>I.</h3>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">M</span>R. PHINEAS PHLYNN, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish

-estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic

-nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous

-functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and

-less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by

-his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the

-abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to

-his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his

-neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy

-man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was

-only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed

-property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits

-included an addiction to French<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> wines and Irish whiskey, a decided

-inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures

-at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into

-frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger

-percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.</p>

-

-<p>But how was it to be done?</p>

-

-<p>He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry

-had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in

-mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and

-the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land

-League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master

-about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he

-described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his

-gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious

-bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks

-deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But

-the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.

-Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a

-repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have

-their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console

-Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his

-fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t

-enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant

-degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent

-to guess<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal

-forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a

-crisis. There should be an outrage&mdash;a sanguinary, blood-curdling

-outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent

-carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least

-eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual

-peril.</p>

-

-<h3>II.</h3>

-

-<p>There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion

-of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself&mdash;at least, he shot his

-own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this

-horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact

-that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s

-hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was

-in it or not&mdash;really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so

-tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly

-inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such

-objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat

-on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police

-barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and

-the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his

-dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his

-revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence

-of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforemen<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span>tioned, and poured

-into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of

-his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had

-fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his

-head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!</p>

-

-<h3>III.</h3>

-

-<p>The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country

-was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The

-revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.

-The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the

-government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized

-community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages

-of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information

-that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an

-exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively

-kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes&mdash;a feat

-unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir

-and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown

-had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For

-nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it

-was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their

-emotions.</p>

-

-<p>All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence

-given to him as the em<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span>ployer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,

-that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to

-get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would

-become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition

-permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his

-outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London

-detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the

-event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,

-Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,

-Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine

-bargains, left London for Leitrim.</p>

-

-<p>In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with

-the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of

-the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same

-neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.</p>

-

-<h3>IV.</h3>

-

-<p>In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he

-could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work

-of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.</p>

-

-<p>About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident

-that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because

-every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been

-arrested, and established their innocence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span> The foreigner who had failed

-would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents

-loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.</p>

-

-<p>It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced

-that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking

-measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector

-Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest

-both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names

-of Jones and Brennan.</p>

-

-<h3>V.</h3>

-

-<p>Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.</p>

-

-<p>“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at

-you.”</p>

-

-<p>“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong

-reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.</p>

-

-<p>“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”</p>

-

-<p>“Where is he?” queried Phineas.</p>

-

-<p>“Here.”</p>

-

-<p>“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for

-revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,

-when, why, how&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am

-Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been

-commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> I’ve fished. I

-may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant

-for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and

-whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and

-at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police

-there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve

-trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare&mdash;I have him,

-I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins

-departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the

-unconscious Crawley.</p>

-

-<h3>VI.</h3>

-

-<p>“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant

-for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas

-Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no

-time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant

-Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in

-accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in

-Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.</p>

-

-<h3>VII.</h3>

-

-<p>Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and

-about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of

-Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span>

-tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,

-too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.

-If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”</p>

-

-<p>“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head

-Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the

-Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,

-if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I

-whistled for them.”</p>

-

-<p>It was so arranged.</p>

-

-<p>Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,

-describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three

-official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened

-and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep

-consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to

-himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding

-the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand

-and the warrant fluttering in his left.</p>

-

-<p>“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he

-ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at

-him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables

-grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a

-racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip

-off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and

-deposit<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span>ing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a

-shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire

-with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to

-receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by

-Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was

-carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells

-and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers

-charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they

-splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred

-skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the

-hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned

-each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms

-and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their

-Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.

-Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among

-the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the

-entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal

-production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully

-unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian

-crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s

-hat.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY" id="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY"></a>THE RED-HEART DAISY.<br /><br />

-<small>A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The storm of wrath<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">And in its path<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In quivering bodies and distorted faces.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Among the bloody drift of dead and dying<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">That strewed the ground,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The searchers found.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Some essence from the forms interred together<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Enriched the clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">’Neath which they lay&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Rough hide and dainty skin&mdash;deep brain and hollow&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Silver and iron&mdash;Vulcan and Apollo.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The mountain’s crest,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Among the rest,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span>

-<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Those who would make our land a frame of metal,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">With jewelled heart,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">As thing apart<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING" id="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING"></a>THE TIDE IS TURNING.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, masters who have ruled so long<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With cruel rods of iron,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who sought with gyves and fetters strong<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our freedom to environ,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In plenitude of sullen power<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our tearful pleadings spurning:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Prepare ye for your fated hour,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Beware&mdash;the tide is turning!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Yes! yes! at last we fling the past<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">With all its woes behind us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">And stand to-day in firm array<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Against the bonds that bind us.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">With brutal grip of tyrant hand<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Ye choked our aspirations,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And made our fertile motherland<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The Niobe of nations;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To feed the vices of your lords,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Ye stole the people’s earning,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And held the theft with hireling swords&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But now the tide is turning!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Is tottering to ruin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The Irish race a future face<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">That will not harbor you in!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ye kept us chained to ignorance,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In fear that education<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Might teach our brains the wisest chance<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To liberate the nation.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But, spite of all your guile and thrall,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our people still are learning<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What most will tend your yoke to rend,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And so the tide is turning.<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Each rusty chain is breaking;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The portents smile upon our isle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">For Ireland is awaking.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From meadows rich of smooth Kildare<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To frowning crags of Kerry,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From ocean-girdled shores of Clare<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To busy marts of Derry,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In our opprest, north, south, east, west,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A newer spirit’s burning&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The conquering fire of brave desire,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That tells the tide is turning.<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The light at last is blazing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Till on our brow no serf-brand now<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Can chill a friendly gazing.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="OUR_OWN_AGAIN" id="OUR_OWN_AGAIN"></a>OUR OWN AGAIN.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE voice of freedom’s sounding<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From farthest shore to shore;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Erin’s pulse is bounding<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With manhood’s blood once more;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our sluggard trance is broken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We stand erect as men,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our stern demand is spoken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No futile bribes can stay us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No traitor chiefs control,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No wheedling tones delay us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No terrors blanch our soul.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The gloomy hour has vanished<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And gone forever when<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We could be crushed or banished&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The bluster of the Tories,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And Whigdom’s tempting lies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are vain and foolish stories<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We spurn and we despise.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ve torn the landlord foeman<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From out his reeking den,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And now we’ll halt for no man&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Our eyes are lifted sunward,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No power can bar our course,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our march must still be onward,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Spite either guile or force;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And be it by the sabre,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The voice, the vote, or pen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or steadfast, patient labor&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL" id="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL"></a>THE TALE OF A TAIL.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE’S a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That the time for speech was past&mdash;the knife was mightier than the pen.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS" id="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS"></a>THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.</h2>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during

-the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of

-the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on

-the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,

-in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island

-was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for

-over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land

-Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?

-Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.

-The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible

-to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses

-record the exploit:]</p></div>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With due responsibility on each official breast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That their unexpected <i>dejeuner</i> was owing to the Act.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Although alternate intervals were taken to allow<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY" id="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY"></a>CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ existence will become a dreary void;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Shall we revel in our customary fun<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of scaring all the humble women folk<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ life by common people be enjoyed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But we didn’t think you positively cruel<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX" id="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX"></a>CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.<br /><br />

-<small>(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For struggling poor sowls like myself,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To brighten our dreary existence,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ even to gather some pelf,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In a land where the soil is but waitin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Away from the strings of my life&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From the spot where my mother lies buried,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The place where I coorted my wife.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My conscience remorsefully pricks&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When my luck like a stranger goes by,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When blight settles down on the praties,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I curse you, misfortune so cruel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And often at night I’ve a notion,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In that plintiful land o’er the ocean<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They might even an odd pat of butther<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Along with their stirabout mix;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, my heart is too full for to utter<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">To see the health-roses assimble<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With the innocent laugh of my girls;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="JENKINS_M_P" id="JENKINS_M_P"></a>JENKINS, M. P.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To address the electors he’d soothered before,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he found in their feelings toward him a change,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And as it was freezing it needn’t be told<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THADY_MALONE" id="THADY_MALONE"></a>THADY MALONE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH for our tight little, bright little nation,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Were once we united<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Our wrongs should be righted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">But still some intraygur,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Or bastely renayger,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Yet, no matter, we’ve planned<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">A divarsion so grand<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">And the rogue who’ll consent<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">To contribute rack rint<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">For his wife wint away<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">On the very next day<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">An’ sisters and cousins<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Departed in dozens,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Why, sorra a doubt,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Sure, the fire it wint out<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Till he felt that the rint<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Had been badly ill-spint<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The sparrows, diminted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Grew quite discontinted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The pigs tuk to fittin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">An’ hins that were sittin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">A polis inspector,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">A taxes collector,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">An’ there now he’s stuck,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Without hope, grace, or luck,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> <a name="RORYS_REVERIE" id="RORYS_REVERIE"></a>RORY’S REVERIE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ they must know&mdash;the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">(“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging hotly round),&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She kissed me ere she sank to rest&mdash;I’d think it sin just now<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I mustn’t think of this&mdash;No! no! for Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My child&mdash;but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’m shakin’ like an aspen&mdash;Faugh! I can’t afford to spend<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE" id="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE"></a>A DOUBLE SURPRISE.</h2>

-

-<h3>I.<br /><br />

-GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.</h3>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">C</span>ONSTABLE Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the

-Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail

-to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable

-Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was

-tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,

-and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution

-which has deprived the Irish constabulary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span> of all the ordinary feelings

-of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a

-riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a

-recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was

-born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was

-evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in

-dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested

-suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar

-to his code of instructions and mode of training&mdash;these were mysteries

-known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The

-physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own

-limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry

-McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the

-metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the

-somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in

-the parish who disputed unpopularity with him&mdash;George Macgrabb, J. P.,

-the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of

-its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles

-around.</p>

-

-<p>Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two

-despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral&mdash;or

-immoral&mdash;characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the

-recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to

-the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,

-that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span> chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question

-about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,

-which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to

-direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were

-supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save

-Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police

-were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the

-constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.

-Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his

-magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest

-in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he

-had sent to Gallagher a goose.</p>

-

-<p>“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate

-feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to

-rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.

-Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your

-comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”</p>

-

-<p>Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and

-miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,

-or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the

-gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship

-are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried

-to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of

-a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span> half-a-dozen

-agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make

-his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But

-the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The

-compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin <i>Farmer’s Gazette</i> recommended

-boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his

-own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged

-Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.

-The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he

-could recover from this outrage to his judgment.</p>

-

-<p>The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the <i>Barndoor

-Chronicle</i> gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert

-Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of

-edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight

-spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.

-He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the

-kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in

-Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and

-culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be

-fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,

-half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official <i>Gazette</i>, tunic

-buttons, bayonet sheaths&mdash;anything, everything, except flesh-forming

-food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private

-circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,

-search-warrants, copies of infor<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span>mation, it swallowed with an avidity

-that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.</p>

-

-<p>I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a

-knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that

-wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be

-necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that

-transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.</p>

-

-<h3>II.<br /><br />

-A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.</h3>

-

-<p>The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable

-Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.

-They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,

-and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant

-farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated

-Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,

-madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never

-doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and

-propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British

-justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary

-joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and

-your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who

-is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great

-measure to his powers of mimicry, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span> the fact that Macgrabb and

-Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At

-weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again

-and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the

-magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the

-greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried

-in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would

-have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s

-charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at

-finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue

-and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous

-countenance.</p>

-

-<p>As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s

-father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the

-parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either

-the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the

-sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not

-account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a

-two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and

-in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb

-could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s

-Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less

-expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,

-guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to

-contribute, but he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span> could and did express his opinion of the

-rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis

-was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of

-the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within

-measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s

-collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had

-begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the

-universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left

-McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his

-difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered

-the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.</p>

-

-<p>I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This

-reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.

-Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,

-frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the

-opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of

-his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in

-his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the

-fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a

-devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he

-couldn’t quite understand it himself.</p>

-

-<p>It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly

-disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical

-susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span>

-Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and

-with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a

-knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical

-studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a

-grass plot, and out into the high road.</p>

-

-<p>It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose

-of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the

-peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.</p>

-

-<p>“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand

-familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper

-escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch

-McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”</p>

-

-<p>“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.</p>

-

-<p>“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been

-engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents

-are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and

-you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents&mdash;you’re not

-supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t

-nab that rent receipt&mdash;you’ll know it&mdash;it’s on blue, thick paper&mdash;what

-harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police

-authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing

-else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down

-for you, and the chance, Tom&mdash;think of that, my<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span> boy&mdash;the chance of

-having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood

-out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party

-last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you

-think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,

-gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till

-the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with

-delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”</p>

-

-<p>“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers

-and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a

-rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies

-of the <i>Irish World</i>, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,

-even if I lose my stripes.”</p>

-

-<p>On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a

-loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the

-summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and

-Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.</p>

-

-<p>“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he

-yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my

-oath&mdash;I mane this sarch-warrant&mdash;I demand any arms, ammunition,

-traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”</p>

-

-<p>McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to

-his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,

-“Arrah! Ser<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span>geant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of

-these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,

-yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have

-such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”</p>

-

-<p>The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his

-followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or

-scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,

-and the merciless jeering of the young student.</p>

-

-<p>On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.

-If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there

-is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”</p>

-

-<p>That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat

-down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the

-search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged

-in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the

-table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring

-in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened

-by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and

-perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was

-the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the

-omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers

-strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,

-but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and

-disappeared from view.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span></p>

-

-<h3>III.<br /><br />

-A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.</h3>

-

-<p>About noon the constable received the following note:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your

-grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for

-£24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George

-Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take

-legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your

-punishment. Yours, etc., <span class="smcap">Patrick McCarthy</span>.</p></div>

-

-<p>The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">

-<span class="smcap">Mr. McCarthy</span>:<br />

-</p>

-

-<p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to

-the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few

-suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin

-Castle.</p>

-

-<p class="r">

-Yours, <span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />

-<i>Constable, R. I. C.</i><br />

-</p></div>

-

-<p>The second note was less short, but more mysterious:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">

-<span class="smcap">Mr. Macgrabb</span>:<br />

-</p>

-

-<p><i>Respected Sir</i>,&mdash;That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying

-out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.

-Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has

-one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its

-stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it wo<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span>n’t digest a

-piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill

-the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful</p>

-

-<p class="r">

-<span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>.<br />

-</p></div>

-

-<p>The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives

-from Macgrabb:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">

-<span class="smcap">The Lodge</span>, Dec. 7, 1880.<br />

-</p>

-

-<p><i>My dear Mr. McCarthy</i>,&mdash;I find on looking over the office books

-that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.

-His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his

-father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,

-and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I

-would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of

-course you know the consequences of delay.</p>

-

-<p class="c">Faithfully yours,</p>

-

-<p class="r">

-<span class="smcap">George Macgrabb</span>.<br />

-</p>

-

-<p><i>Dear Constable</i>,&mdash;Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to

-drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.</p>

-

-<p class="r">

-<span class="smcap">George.</span><br />

-</p></div>

-

-<h3>IV.<br /><br />

-THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.</h3>

-

-<p>To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his

-note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its

-literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,

-for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more

-for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat

-annoyed, even if it did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span> alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was

-a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have

-killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost

-receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive

-interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the

-missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated

-blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document

-obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to

-breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the

-barracks of its treasure.</p>

-

-<p>On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the

-fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after

-Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent

-to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment

-against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the

-said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why

-such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious

-tenant.</p>

-

-<p>On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.</p>

-

-<p>“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day

-or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from

-McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was

-stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the

-<i>Irish World</i> found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the

-bench against<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span> him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We

-landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G&mdash;d, I’ll

-put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll

-be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have

-every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other

-rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them

-down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more

-men.”</p>

-

-<p>“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a

-vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,

-didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains

-of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a

-fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save

-young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?

-He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then

-look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.

-Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating

-and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a

-hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the

-hamper was attached a card:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>“A Christmas Box&mdash;From Harry McCarthy.”</p>

-

-<p>“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,

-with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from

-the box a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span> “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher

-and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the

-goose!”</p>

-

-<p>They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,

-as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as

-ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the

-law.</p>

-

-<p>The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time

-before he could read its contents:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p><i>My poor Gallagher</i>,&mdash;I do not wish to deprive you of your

-Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold

-collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your

-last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It

-has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its

-exploring turn of mind that I admire&mdash;though certainly it is the

-most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I

-confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been

-well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect

-employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its

-digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,

-and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier

-to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I

-discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most

-valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it

-has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of

-blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and

-hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been

-better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept

-your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of

-discovery<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the

-mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a

-treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,

-which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare

-time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of

-exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing

-interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original

-author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity

-in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his

-ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a

-strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal

-would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and

-dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps

-both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,</p>

-

-<p class="r">

-Yours, as ever,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />

-<span class="smcap">Harry McCarthy</span>.<br />

-</p>

-

-<p>P. S.&mdash;I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”

-which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send

-you tickets?</p></div>

-

-<p>They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after

-they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply

-for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the

-whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the

-greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot

-say which was the greater surprise&mdash;that which he felt when he

-encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he

-got it back again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE" id="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE"></a>OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>RIGHTLY our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Firm is each footstep, erect every head.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Wakens the nation&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On to the contest, then, up with the green again!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Death to the tyrant&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But now she rises erect from her knee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">England no longer can mock or deride us;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">True to the cause we shall ever remain.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Soldiers, press onward&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="PHILIPSONS_PARTY" id="PHILIPSONS_PARTY"></a>PHILIPSON’S PARTY.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">P</span>ETER PHILIPSON, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson

-Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived

-in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the

-express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,

-which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out

-of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had

-allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three

-years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle

-manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease&mdash;with a

-view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all

-round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to

-view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was

-regarded by Old Soapsuds,&mdash;which was the very irreverend title those

-benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the

-city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime

-of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span> the

-tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table

-had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest

-bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson

-had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it

-would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no

-effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and

-calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict

-Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest

-of the tenants.</p>

-

-<p>At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going

-agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,

-ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of

-landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the

-entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put

-down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was

-smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of

-any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally

-workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked

-fifty&mdash;fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to

-beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was

-what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had

-Peter Philipson&mdash;“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.</p>

-

-<p>The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained

-the old housekeeper and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span> cook and the coachman and a stable boy,

-only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas

-Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the

-evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of

-the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first

-proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the

-neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his

-next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as

-a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he

-expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the

-recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.

-These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate

-missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,

-including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under

-penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon

-his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his

-father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle

-to the <i>Limehouse Chronicle</i> on the proper method of settling the Irish

-difficulty.</p>

-

-<p>On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his

-tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay

-up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected

-so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the

-farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span>

-who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them

-retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say

-that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be

-a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,

-and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,

-he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got

-round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest

-without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”</p>

-

-<p>“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an

-ill-disguised sneer.</p>

-

-<p>Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the

-wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the

-twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.</p>

-

-<p>“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, we’re here to bring <i>you</i> to <i>your</i> senses; not to show that

-we’ve parted with our own.”</p>

-

-<p>“I&mdash;I&mdash;” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t

-understand you.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for

-arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to

-raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long

-as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint

-too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span> to offer you a fair rint for

-this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t

-like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to

-the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”</p>

-

-<p>Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was

-nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he

-did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is

-mo&mdash;mo&mdash;monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in

-every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll

-evict&mdash;I’ll-I’ll&mdash;by Jove! I’ll&mdash;I’ll&mdash;Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of

-this!”</p>

-

-<p>“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like

-to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve

-only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,

-begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man

-to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,

-thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.

-Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts

-of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own

-fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t

-neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word

-of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A

-thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the

-deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest

-chair with a dim conviction surging through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span> his brain that there was

-something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,

-Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than

-Ballymurphy, County Cork.</p>

-

-<p>After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things

-were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the

-decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about

-that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so

-how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with

-him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived

-spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was

-interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man

-Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which

-at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.</p>

-

-<p>“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.</p>

-

-<p>“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,

-she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the

-’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the

-front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe

-there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,

-’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’

-mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a

-hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with

-the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span>

-come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey&mdash;I mean

-to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham&mdash;I

-didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as

-much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for

-Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of

-hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful

-Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”</p>

-

-<p>Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed

-sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest

-railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the

-distance he could place before nightfall between himself and

-Ballymurphy.</p>

-

-<p>A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had

-spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires

-were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision

-store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig

-he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his

-equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter

-groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited

-guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.

-Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring

-squires from half a dozen estates&mdash;a goodly company of fifteen or

-sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their

-wants,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span> and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple

-of loaves to feast their appetites!</p>

-

-<p>It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the

-burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman

-in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the

-whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial

-in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking

-examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he

-would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?

-Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing

-his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where

-boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and

-housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he

-poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?</p>

-

-<p>He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.

-With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove

-the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to

-his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He

-restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the

-stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The

-party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it

-was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.</p>

-

-<p>If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a

-soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span> the counting-house of

-Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his

-candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned

-to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be

-firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on

-the subject.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>ILL up once more, we’ll drink a toast<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To comrades far away;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No nation on the earth can boast<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of braver hearts than they.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And though they sleep in dungeons deep,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or flee, outlawed and banned,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We love them yet, we ne’er forget<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Foredoomed by alien laws,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Some on the scaffold proudly died<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For holy Ireland’s cause.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And brothers, say, shall we to-day<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Unmoved like cowards stand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While traitors shame and foes defame<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The felons of our land?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Some in the convict’s dreary cell<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have found a living tomb,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And some unseen, unfriended, fell<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Within its silent gloom.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet what care we, although it be<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Trod by a ruffian band,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God bless the clay where rest to-day<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Oh, little do we care,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An Irish head can wear!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And every Gael in Innisfail<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From Lee to Boyne would gladly join<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION" id="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION"></a>AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And as he contemplated the interminable rain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">As he thought of bronchial attacks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His gloomy face relaxed,&mdash;indeed, he actually laughed;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He whispered to the jarvey&mdash;“You remember Murphy’s land;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That is, could you perambulate<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Around that gentleman’s estate<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Return the muddy boots to me<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Unbrushed, because I wish to be<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He simply mopped the boots around<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The dirtiest adjacent ground,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER" id="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER"></a>A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>’M diminted,&mdash;this is awful; so it is<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The time I lost my churning through the thunder.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I wouldn’t mind the ould man,&mdash;not a jot;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">I always looked upon him as a blaggard,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Since his language was so disperately hot,<br /></span>

-<span class="i1">Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They might pass their resolutions by the score<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">About him, and I would niver prove contrary,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I would do my best endayvors to obey;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION" id="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION"></a>A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span> PEGGY, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And help me to recover from my state of discontint;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i4">For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">By the light of that same silver moon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Found out of his bed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">But will straightway be led<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">To a cushion of plank,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">That of feathers is blank,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">For resting his arm round your waist,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">An’ except for a sigh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Or a glance of your eye,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Or an odd little squeeze<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">That there’s nobody sees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">His comfort will be of the laste.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">I despised my five miles of a thramp<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i8">For I knew at its ind<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">I could always dipind<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">That some one I’d find<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Who had sootherings kind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">To rescue my sperits from damp.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Stritched out on an ould cabin door,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">With six ounces of lead<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Settled inside my head,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">An’ my bosom, that’s true<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">As the saints unto you,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Disarranged by an ounce or two more.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">And the law has such far-seeing eyes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">’Twould find thim all out,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">And there isn’t a doubt<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Introduced I would be,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">By some dirty J. P.,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">To a suit of the Government frieze.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="ONEILLS_ADDRESS" id="ONEILLS_ADDRESS"></a>O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.<br /><br />

-<small>BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>ALLANT sons of Innisfail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ye whose stout hearts never quail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though no glittering coats of mail<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Their proud throbbings hide:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hark! yon distant sullen hum!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis the rolling of the drum.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See! our Saxon foemen come<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">In their wrath and pride.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Meet them, comrades, face to face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Meet them as becomes our race,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Let no shadow of disgrace<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Dim our spotless name.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Front to front, unshrinking, stand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Fire each heart and nerve each hand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strike for God and fatherland,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Liberty and fame!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Kinsmen, they are still the same<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As when, centuries past, they came<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To our shores, and blood and flame<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Followed in their track;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the still uncancelled debt<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We were cowards to forget,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the wrongs we suffer yet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Drive them headlong back!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">As when angry billows leap,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like proud chargers from the deep,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">All their wrath to spray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So their glinting waves of steel<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till their serried columns reel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Scattered in dismay.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Still unconquered, proud, and free;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strike, and fear not,&mdash;victory<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Waits on every blow;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strike, that we may never roam<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strike together, and strike home,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Vengeance on the foe!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_FENIANS_DREAM" id="THE_FENIANS_DREAM"></a>THE FENIAN’S DREAM.<br /><br />

-<small>CHRISTMAS, 1867.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HROUGH London’s dull and murky air<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The merry Christmas bells<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Their sonorous throbs and swells.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the half-slumbering town they spoke<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of peace and God’s good-will,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And seemed to chase with pealing stroke<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The fiends of hate and ill;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But, ah, how cruelly they broke<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Around dark Pentonville!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Half timid, forced their way,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And fell in slender, silvery streams,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Down where the convict lay.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They glanced a moment round the place,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Cold, comfortless, and bare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then, in a pitying embrace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Like angel spirits there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Caressed the careworn, pallid face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">So wan, and yet so fair.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">They seemed to whisper softly while<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Around his head they strayed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Half joy, half anguish, played;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As if the tender moonbeams sought<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bright tales of hope to tell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the day memories, bitter, wrought<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Such fancies to dispel;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And so his two dream guardians fought<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Within his lonely cell.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His dream was of the loved old land<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He never could forget&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Had not subdued it yet;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The land of legend and of lay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of mountain, stream, and lake,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of forest, glen, and brake,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where highland sprite and lowland fay<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A home forever make.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The land whose children toil and bleed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And drudge and starve in vain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For where the peasant sows the seed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A stranger reaps the grain.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Isle of Saints&mdash;where knaves and spies<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Flourish and thrive apace;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where fortune must be wooed by lies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Dishonor, and disgrace;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The true man from such saintdom flies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And cattle take his place.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Land of the green, and of the gray!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For workhouse, tomb, and jail<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And answer, Innisfail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Tell us which tint thou seest most,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The old one or the new?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The green of which our poets boast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or the more sombre hue?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Few wear the green: a countless host<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have donned the gray for you.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Island of verdure, glorious land!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">So rich in fertile plains,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Yet famine ever reigns;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where through the mellow ripening corn<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The balmiest zephyrs sigh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where brighter seems each glowing morn,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">More radiant each sky;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where ’tis misfortune to be born,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And happiness to die.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To think he played once more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Beside the cabin door&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Upon his mother’s knee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He first had learned to lisp a prayer<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For Ireland’s liberty,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ever pregnant seemed the air<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With joyous melody.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His fancy changed: the youthful face<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In sternness now was set,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His woes had left no coward trace<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Upon his spirit yet;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His cheeks were all aglow;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Expanded seemed the hollow chest,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His brows contract, as though<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Disturbed and broken was his rest<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">By some nocturnal foe.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He dreamt that in his native land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Away from this bleak jail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He stood within a meadow grand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A shamrock-spangled vale.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Above the scene the sun-rays bright<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In glittering grandeur beamed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around him in their golden light<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Ten thousand bayonets beamed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Green Erin’s banner streamed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From town and village, hill and glen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With clamorous fife and drum,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From mountain brake and lowland fen<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The mustering legions come;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Has brought his dinted blade;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While quickly from the neighboring town<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Flock in the sons of trade;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The farmer flings his good spade down,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And joins the dense brigade.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The fiery Northmen, in whose veins<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Still flows the blood of those<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who on a hundred battle-plains<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have conquered Erin’s foes&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The brave descendants of O’Neill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A stern and fearless band,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A living wall of sparkling steel<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Beneath the old flag stand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And many a Saxon foe shall feel<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">With Ulster’s columns, side by side,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Are Munster’s squadrons massed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like tigers into line they glide,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">So noiselessly and fast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">They bear into the fray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through England’s host their sabres keen<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Shall carve a corse-strewn way,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Limerick and Skibbereen<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Be well avenged to-day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Proud Leinster, all your chivalry<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To arms electric spring;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">High ’mid the battle’s revelry<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your stirring shout shall ring;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And many a foe this day shall rue<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your fierce, impetuous might;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The scenes that gallant Wexford knew<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Shall be reversed ere night;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The epitaph to Emmet due<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your gleaming swords shall write.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Within your ranks this hour;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Before the strength your hatred gives<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Well may the despot cower.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Think of your long, black night of tears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And say, can you forget<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That huge, uncancelled debt,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The wrongs of thrice two hundred years<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That scourge your province yet?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Hark to that distant rumbling sound!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">See, yonder come the foe;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Now be our arms with victory crowned,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The foreign scum laid low.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The stillness and the calm are o’er,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And many a sulphurous cloud,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Betinged with flame and dripping gore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Shall form a battle-shroud<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For those whose tongues may swell no more<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The nation’s slogan loud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Like hostile torrents armies clash,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And steel now crosses steel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The lurid flames incessant flash,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And volleyed thunders peal;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But backward reel the alien ranks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With one exultant cry,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Not vainly will ye die;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The craven red-coats fly!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And though yon darling flag<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">May float above our castle towers<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A torn and tattered rag,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis still our own; and every fold<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Preserved us from the strife,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Each shred around that flag-staff rolled<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Unpierced by ball or knife,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is worth a mine of virgin gold&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Aye, worth a hero’s life.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From slimy cell and dungeon damp<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bring forth our prisoned men;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Gather, ye braves, from every camp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To cheer them home again.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What though to-day they did not bleed<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To share our victory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We reap the harvest of their seed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">So victors still they be;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From faction they our people freed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And now our land is free.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span>

-<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The city with your strain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Your loudest music cannot break<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The felon’s rest again.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor left a single ray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For all that but this moment shone<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Retreat before the day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But that last, loving, pitying one<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Has borne his soul away.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Died in his cell”&mdash;and nothing more;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Twas all his comrades heard;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But of the dream he had before<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He died,&mdash;oh, not a word!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They found him on the coarse straw bed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A smile upon his face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, “Number 28 found dead,”<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Was whispered round the place;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the jail doctor shook his head<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And wondered at the case!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT" id="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT"></a>THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>N earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There is not much fun in recovering rent<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Where the Land League has hold of the people;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i8">But upheaval of earth<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Is good reason for mirth,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Compared to a seat<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Where the Commoners meet<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Catarrhic attacks are not charming,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Should close diagnosis<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Reveal your probocis<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">To be of your weakness recorder,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">You might foolishly curse;<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">But it’s very much worse<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are music compared to the agonized yell<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of rage and derision, his greeting;<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">You go home to your bed<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">With a pain in your head,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Your sleep is a blight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Your comfort takes flight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Your breathing is tight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">You scratch and you bite,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Or you wake with affright<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">As you dream through the night<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">That Mulligan rises to order!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="ERIN_MACHREE_1798" id="ERIN_MACHREE_1798"></a>ERIN MACHREE (1798).</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE sun had gone down in a halo of glory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We gathered together in sorrow and weeping<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That morning must dawn on our island at last.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS" id="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS"></a>THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>HEN Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years

-ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret

-conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he

-decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and

-Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly

-attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently

-to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the

-combined detective forces.</p>

-

-<p>Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff

-of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua

-Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to

-Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his

-impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is

-fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span>

-aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,&mdash;intensely

-jealous&mdash;the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy&mdash;a Mount

-Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,

-cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.</p>

-

-<p>She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional

-nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all

-the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a

-renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his

-constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,

-in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in

-petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix

-surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his

-coat-collar as a sort of <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> to repel illegal embraces.

-Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the

-postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was

-quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to

-witness the pair&mdash;he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the

-other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a

-miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging

-promiscuously about her&mdash;careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase

-to that winning post, the door.</p>

-

-<p>Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of

-night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst

-out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span>

-snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the

-amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would

-remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of

-slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of

-feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.</p>

-

-<p>Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra

-professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,

-but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or

-other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of

-civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed

-on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any

-postal manual.</p>

-

-<p>Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not

-phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad

-fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our

-rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.

-London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and

-cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to

-Love’s young dream in the entire A division.</p>

-

-<p>He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids

-either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and

-there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a

-maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted

-brother. He was madly smitten by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span> new object of adoration about every

-five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a

-week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a

-school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or

-so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular

-as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed

-around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of

-sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If

-accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and

-forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.</p>

-

-<p>In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen

-cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four

-washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.</p>

-

-<p>His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent

-intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley

-Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of

-promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare

-not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet

-day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big

-brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted

-to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular

-London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.</p>

-

-<p>No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all

-these horrors which a trip to Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span> afforded him. But, alas! he

-brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been

-kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not

-been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful

-affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,

-Burns &amp; Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices&mdash;“Original price, 2

-guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”</p>

-

-<p>The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer

-in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the

-elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the

-confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their

-secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the

-pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns &amp; Co.</p>

-

-<p>By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It

-was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,

-but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see

-her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill

-under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.</p>

-

-<p>He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest

-observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”

-he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold

-forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,

-mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight

-effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span>

-water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no

-response.</p>

-

-<p>“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens

-reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up

-alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a

-disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and

-electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a

-stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred

-spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,

-of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare

-the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,

-and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with

-me to sunnier climes?&mdash;we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or

-Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest

-Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or

-whatever thy sweet name may be&mdash;behold me at thy feet!”</p>

-

-<p>And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the

-bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of

-which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of

-plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool

-shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman

-was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at

-robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in

-the shape of tears.</p>

-

-<p>The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span> tender-hearted

-Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the

-most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t

-tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish

-colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a

-charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought

-it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’

-figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.</p>

-

-<p>This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which

-shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit

-those wonderfully informed London journals, the <i>Standard</i> and <i>Daily

-Telegraph</i>, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping

-vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to

-remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins

-himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of

-his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at

-least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric

-light.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="BALFOURS_WISH" id="BALFOURS_WISH"></a>BALFOUR’S WISH.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN members have taken their usual places,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And as, one by one, question follows on question,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In agony mental that spoils his digestion,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“The average size of potatoes in Clare?”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A third seeks a legal opinion, without<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Does he ever indulge in the national car?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="OUR_CAUSE" id="OUR_CAUSE"></a>OUR CAUSE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>EVEN hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT" id="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT"></a>SERVED HIM RIGHT.</h2>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the

-Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat

-right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor

-creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”&mdash;<i>London

-Graphic.</i>]</p></div>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE no tears for brother Pat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the Egyptian desert, that<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He might assist in England’s glory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The foes he fought were not his own,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then why should I his fate bemoan?<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">O brother, faithless and degraded!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He saw how Saxon laws at home<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Why should he cross the ocean’s foam<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To place that hated yoke on others?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Arabs slew him in a fight<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For all by brave and free men cherished&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ay, for the cause of truth and right,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For which his kith and kin had perished.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No Arab chief in Ninety-eight<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They lent no spears to swell the hate<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But those who wrapt our homes in flame<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It was for them&mdash;oh, burning shame!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My brother gave his life in battle.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Sure, every memory of late<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Must from his wretched heart have vanished;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our hills and valleys desolate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our ruined homes, our people banished.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And yet, God knows, he learned in youth<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The gloomy story of his sireland&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Drank in at mother’s knees the truth<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That England is the scourge of Ireland.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I cannot weep for brother Pat&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">I hate the hellish cause he died for;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">False traitor to the freedom that<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">E’en when in tearful dreams I see<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My grief is changed to anger. He<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Was treacherous to the land that bore him!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="RAPPAREE_SONG" id="RAPPAREE_SONG"></a>RAPPAREE SONG.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’re traitors because we are true to our land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They have hunted us down now for many a day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND" id="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND"></a>TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">Y</span>OU tendered us when famine came<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The pity of a thought,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And hearts and souls you’d bought.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Time’s wheel turns round&mdash;you’ve lost your place,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And right into your tyrant face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Your jibes and sneers<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Of many years<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">At victims’ tears<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Are thrown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">And in God’s name,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Our hearts aflame,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">To-day we claim<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Muscle and brain we wrought.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Toiled, starved, and died&mdash;scarce for ourselves<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The crumbs of Lazarus sought;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when ye flung us out a crust,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our faces grovelling in the dust,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">We gave ye thanks&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">No prize, all blanks<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">In our poor ranks<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Was known;<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">But now, thank God,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">We’ve spurned your rod,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">And claim this sod<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We lift our faces to the sky<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Where once our heads were bowed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We breathe no more a timid sigh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But speak our thoughts aloud.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From dizzy hill and peaceful plain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our voices join in this refrain:<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The seeds we sow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The crops we grow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">The fields we mow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Alone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Without your aid<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">In cash or spade<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">At last are made<br /></span>

-<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="BALFOUR_REJOICES" id="BALFOUR_REJOICES"></a>BALFOUR REJOICES.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O the toil of the session is over,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My woes for a period cease,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And hey for a journey by Dover<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To latitudes promising peace;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Away to recuperate vigor&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Away from obstruction’s mad spell&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Away from the questions of Biggar&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Away from the taunts of Parnell.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No more my poor head shall be aching<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With night after night of debate&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No more shall my soul feel a quaking<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">At bald, irrepressible prate.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, though ocean attack me with rigor,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And getting away from Parnell.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No more to be quizzed on each capture<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of priest or of peasant by night&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I could dance the can-can in my rapture,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or stand on my head with delight.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or like a wild Irishman yell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And don’t give&mdash;ahem&mdash;for Parnell!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Yet I feel an occasional spasm<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">At thoughts of returning at all,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twere better to leap down a chasm<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or under an avalanche fall;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or, fingers embracing the trigger,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Let the pistol’s report loudly tell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How I hated the queries of Biggar<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the dolorous talk of Parnell.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER" id="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER"></a>A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that

-powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville <i>Sparrow</i>, is a

-sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be

-the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville

-<i>Sparrow</i> (<i>vide</i> its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in

-the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of

-Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and

-creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so

-tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the

-times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the

-Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York

-<i>Herald</i> and <i>Tribune</i> and <i>Times</i> and the Boston <i>Herald</i> and a score

-of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the

-<i>Sparrow</i> felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by

-following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,

-advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold

-himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial

-back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He

-was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old

-copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the

-landed gentry of the country.</p>

-

-<p>His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span> ground. “You

-know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were

-there. We’ve got to lick the New York <i>Herald</i> and the rest of ’em.

-Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.

-There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious

-management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d

-better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do

-to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might

-skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and

-give us some lively telegrams.”</p>

-

-<p>Well, it <i>was</i> lively for a few weeks after that in the <i>Sparrow</i>. One

-day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland&mdash;Seven Landlords Shot!” The next

-there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara&mdash;Six Agents

-Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the <i>Tribune</i> came out

-with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there

-had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and

-seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious

-reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,

-and who didn’t grasp the fact that the <i>Tribune’s</i> was a three-months’

-record, paralyzed the readers of the <i>Sparrow</i> with a blood-curdling

-telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in

-the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in

-their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having

-suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and

-processes on the half-shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146">{146}</a></span> to being stripped naked and turned loose

-for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time

-the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names

-eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to

-improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of

-variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred

-land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should

-diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Galway</span>, Tuesday.&mdash;A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from

-which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon

-yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he

-weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have

-been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new

-veins yet.”</p>

-

-<p>“At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan

-boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she

-can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She

-wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”</p></div>

-

-<p>This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the

-editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,

-according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers

-began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen

-murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of

-errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as

-well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the

-chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147">{147}</a></span> bar next door.

-“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.

-Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,

-and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy

-for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the

-<i>Sparrow</i>, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish

-correspondent:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose

-energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a

-position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.

-As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,

-and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who

-for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his

-repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in &mdash;&mdash;. But to

-abbreviate.</p>

-

-<p>“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose

-brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible

-marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,

-whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin

-elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature

-had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy

-proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we

-asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of

-being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness

-will corroborate<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148">{148}</a></span> my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was

-down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought

-me into Ballykill&mdash;something or somebody. I never witnessed anything

-like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They

-were worn to threads.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make

-a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could

-produce anything like a respectable shade.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of

-the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the

-others.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to

-bark at me&mdash;just collapsed like a house of cards.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He

-felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion

-warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and

-succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary

-instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow

-you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I gave the man a shilling for him&mdash;in two sixpences, so that he could

-balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side

-pocket, it would have brought him down.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s

-centre of gravity.</p>

-

-<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149">{149}</a></span> dining-room, but,

-fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.

-In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom

-of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He

-couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.

-He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his

-feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position

-when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect

-his tail.’</p>

-

-<p>“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double

-knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much

-so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot

-out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a

-moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the

-Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails

-in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had

-a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’

-concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of

-a knot on a dog’s tail!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE" id="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE"></a>THE IRISH BRIGADE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150">{150}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They loved the green island, and died where they fought;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">May we fight the battle of freedom as well<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151">{151}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="SNOOKS" id="SNOOKS"></a>SNOOKS.</h2>

-

-<p class="c"><span class="letra">J</span>USTICE in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the

-law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high

-priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist

-temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about

-one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British

-honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only

-pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very

-corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends

-to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should

-be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,

-he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable

-record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p>“In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative

-to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of

-the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There

-is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.

-When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he

-holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks

-[<i>laughter</i>] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by

-Snooks.’ [<i>Laughter.</i>]”</p></div>

-

-<p>Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect

-that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of

-the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152">{152}</a></span>

-deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest

-admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to

-that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you notice a policeman at the corner of a street<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And confusion quite apparent in his looks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Which his dignity but very little brooks.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS" id="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS"></a>CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>OWARDS the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of

-whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into

-one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her

-like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153">{153}</a></span> pranks of Fenianism

-first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had

-just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel

-leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty

-conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was

-felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been

-foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at

-Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and

-hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and

-provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful

-conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had

-been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky

-Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The

-volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and

-eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible

-confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their

-presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,

-while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like

-Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were

-seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s

-residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with

-nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express

-for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the

-suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of

-engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the

-defunct<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154">{154}</a></span> tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in

-England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they

-were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed

-to the depths of the silent waters.</p>

-

-<p>It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm

-existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was

-augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county

-constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest

-surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public

-buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags

-of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the

-sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like

-Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,

-and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent

-of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he

-ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.

-Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian

-bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon

-the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in

-garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer

-when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing

-the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the

-troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the

-ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the

-barracks attacked<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155">{155}</a></span> by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,

-bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,

-sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into

-as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.</p>

-

-<p>Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of

-Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without

-knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the

-Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,

-and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of

-Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,

-and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.

-Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and

-tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the

-entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow

-candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as

-to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an

-Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they

-were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold

-the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander

-carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the

-candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or

-was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege

-last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of

-the candle<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156">{156}</a></span> idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a

-doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when

-at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to

-find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and

-would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions

-of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm

-tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that

-battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as

-the Caledonian Candlesticks.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST" id="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST"></a>FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157">{157}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158">{158}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG" id="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG"></a>FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH! we stand on Irish land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our hated foe before us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And once for all, to rise or fall,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The green flag flying o’er us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ve raised it proudly overhead.<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">God prosper our endeavor,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To keep it there forever!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We marched away at break of day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And sweethearts left behind us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To strike one blow at yon false foe,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whose rusty fetters bind us.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For while we bear the name of men,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, Ireland shall be free again,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We’ve listened long to traitors mean,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">False England’s scarlet praising;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ve heard them mock our Irish green<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Until our blood seemed blazing!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And chieftains, too, who should be true,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have kept our ranks asunder,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In Freedom’s battle-thunder!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No matter who may lead ’em,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And here’s a curse on every slave<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Who mars the cause of freedom!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159">{159}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Let leaders vain aside remain<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Until their feuds are ended,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Tis by the man who knows no clan<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our flag must be defended.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From Limerick’s walls to Derry,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bold ramblers from the County Clare<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And mountaineers from Kerry.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll chase our alien foes away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll tear our bonds asunder;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We care not who’s to lead to-day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2"><i>We’ll</i> fight and conquer under!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS" id="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS"></a>THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>AR away from the home and the friends they love best,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160">{160}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When they took them away from that desolate place,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They found death had left a bright smile on each face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="DEATHS_VICTORY" id="DEATHS_VICTORY"></a>DEATH’S VICTORY.<br /><br />

-<small>IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But with these ’tis not death&mdash;for through every age,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the stories they tell, the examples they give,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of Genius and Truth&mdash;he will live! he will live!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_161" id="page_161">{161}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG" id="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG"></a>THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>EAR it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On, on, through the smoke and the glare;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We will plant it triumphantly there.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Twas lost at the base of the hill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In sunshine and shower, side by side;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_162" id="page_162">{162}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And our foes even then shall behold that above us<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The flag that our children shall bear<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To see in the land of their love and devotion<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our flag wave triumphantly still.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">from North,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_163" id="page_163">{163}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY" id="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY"></a>HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>ROUSE ye from your slumbering,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Awake to life once more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The time for idle pleadings<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And for vain regrets is o’er;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">But in a fight like men,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll win our own again.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i3">Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Till death we stand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">To make our land<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">A nation proud and free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_164" id="page_164">{164}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We bent unto the tyrant,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And we prayed in vain for years,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But now we’re going to try, boys,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Rifle-balls instead of tears.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The rolling of the drum,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in future our petitions<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From the cannon’s mouth shall come.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From Galway right to Wicklow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And from Cork to Donegal,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll march once more for liberty<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To win it or to fall.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And guard it with our steel;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ll show our foes what deadly blows<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Each Irish arm can deal.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">In ages past the redcoats quailed<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Before our fathers’ might;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have we not still the courage left<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To battle for the right?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though cowards dread the troops in red,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We’ll cross their steel with joy,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And show that Irish valor was<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Not spent at Fontenoy.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The wily knave, the coward slave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To home and life may cling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But there’s no place for falsehood’s face<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Where gleaming sabres ring!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_165" id="page_165">{165}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For Freedom and for Right;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Our last appeal is fight!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_MESSENGER" id="THE_MESSENGER"></a>THE MESSENGER.<br /><br />

-<small>NOVEMBER 23, 1867.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>ITH bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We questioned him with eager eyes&mdash;we had not power to speak,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_166" id="page_166">{166}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel&mdash;<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_167" id="page_167">{167}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And he,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And such a death&mdash;the felon’s death&mdash;the death that villains die&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And, last of all, the father,<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> who that day would leave behind<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No wonder if he faltered&mdash;’twas, oh God! a fearful test;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_168" id="page_168">{168}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And these are murderers, they say&mdash;are cowards, base and vile:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL" id="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL"></a>A TYPICAL TRIAL.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">J</span>OSEPH O’GRABALL, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in

-the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace

-and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid

-offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I

-shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real

-cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably

-one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional

-magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found

-temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed

-into law.</p>

-

-<p>Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality

-decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,

-but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to

-nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing

-faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest

-provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can

-tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_169" id="page_169">{169}</a></span> an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of

-his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side

-with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every

-individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He

-is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and

-arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a

-mustache.</p>

-

-<p>Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life

-lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a

-simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is

-little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless

-there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting

-this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no

-leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But

-the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to

-arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,

-unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to

-his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?

-Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A

-goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about

-Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might

-have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in

-enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.</p>

-

-<p>With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_170" id="page_170">{170}</a></span> April night a

-sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,

-and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,

-they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty

-nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the

-indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,

-which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary

-evidence.</p>

-

-<p>“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”</p>

-

-<p>“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.</p>

-

-<p>“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,

-and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to

-destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious

-Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of

-England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and

-the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.</p>

-

-<p>“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset

-or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the

-ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”</p>

-

-<p>“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”</p>

-

-<p>“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”</p>

-

-<p>“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before

-my men. Come along.”</p>

-

-<p>Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_171" id="page_171">{171}</a></span> utterly amazed and

-confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,

-where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into

-the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones

-what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality

-a rich burlesque:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>“Prisoner, what is your name?”</p>

-

-<p>“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”</p>

-

-<p>“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have

-been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of

-such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a

-note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is

-correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”</p>

-

-<p>“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”</p>

-

-<p>“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male

-gender?”</p>

-

-<p>“He wore breeches, anyhow.”</p>

-

-<p>“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,

-make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the

-customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case

-is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,

-prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, your honor.”</p>

-

-<p>“And this hammer?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, your lordship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_172" id="page_172">{172}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<p>“And these nails?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”</p>

-

-<p>“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and

-this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and

-revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your

-diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how

-far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of

-your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do

-you say?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood

-with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens

-be his bed; and the nails&mdash;the nails&mdash;the troth, I don’t know what I

-wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the

-sarjent.”</p>

-

-<p>“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.

-The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police

-barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand

-grenades.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but

-he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient

-magistrate proceeded:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, your washup.”</p>

-

-<p>“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_173" id="page_173">{173}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<p>“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”</p>

-

-<p>“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter&mdash;a very

-important letter&mdash;from New York. Where did you discover that?”</p>

-

-<p>“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”</p>

-

-<p>“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream

-of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,

-prisoner, what is this drawing?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was

-thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so

-proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”</p>

-

-<p>“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with

-the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,

-with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that

-the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through

-that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”</p>

-

-<p>“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat

-should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking

-you are.”</p>

-

-<p>“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter

-is dated New York&mdash;the most treasonable locality on the face of the

-earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother&mdash;(of course you’re all brothers.

-Sergeant, make a note of that)&mdash;I write these few lines hoping they will

-find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.

-(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I

-cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_174" id="page_174">{174}</a></span> discern it just now.) I met the ould man&mdash;(Rossa, I suppose.

-Make a note, sergeant)&mdash;on landing. He would advise you not to kill the

-ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old&mdash;oh! horrible! I see it all. They have

-actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You

-might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,

-to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the

-rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means&mdash;they begin with the

-same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he

-mean by that?”</p>

-

-<p>“Um&mdash;um&mdash;yourself, I think, your washup.”</p>

-

-<p>“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel

-would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the

-overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed

-further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world

-might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such

-desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,

-I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence

-with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the

-highest sentence in my power&mdash;three months’ imprisonment&mdash;and, sergeant,

-just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”</p>

-

-<p>Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither

-himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought

-his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was

-convicted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_175" id="page_175">{175}</a></span> And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of

-the coercion act.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN" id="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN"></a>JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I am very, very sorry for the <i>Alabama’s</i> pranks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And send his best establishments cavorting through the air&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_176" id="page_176">{176}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_177" id="page_177">{177}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB" id="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB"></a>THE STORY OF A BOMB.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE Shannon’s waves with smiling face<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A modest cabin stood beside<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Its gentle perfume-laden tide.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The sunshine of an honest life,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A prattling child, a loving wife,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The joys of home, their blessings shed<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around the peasant tenant’s head.<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The twinkling stars of summer skies<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">His baby’s locks the noonday rays<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Encircled with a golden haze.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But drear December, dark and chill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sickness and famine scourged the land;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in their train the landlord band,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And aiding in their mission dire<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The liveried hounds in England’s hire.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In one brief hour their work was o’er,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A happy home was home no more.<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The wintry skies looked sadly down,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Upon the babe that sobbed to rest<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Upon its dying mother’s breast.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A week&mdash;a month&mdash;he had no power<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To mark or count each anguished hour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_178" id="page_178">{178}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He knew not if ’twere night or day<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When wife and infant passed away.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Without a hope to dull the pain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That numbed his heart and seared his brain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Despair behind and gloom before,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He left his native Shannon’s shore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The ship’s dark side with fond caress,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">While chimes from many a distant bell<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With earnest faces fierce and grim,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are gathered near a silent swamp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Rough toilers from a mining camp;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The rasping tones of Ulster greet<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The voice of Munster soft and sweet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But one and all are Ireland’s friends.<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Yet whispering pines that bend above<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Hear words of hatred, not of love;<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Tears that from eyes of strong men fall<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Are not of mercy, but of gall.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Each has a sickening tale to tell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of England’s robber rule of hell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Each has a deeply cherished cause<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To hate her power and curse her laws.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Then who will venture life, and go<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To wreak our vengeance on this foe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_179" id="page_179">{179}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he from Shannon answers “I!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The western breezes catch the vow<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">That surges from his bosom now,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The exile’s vengeful brand to bear<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">And smite the tiger in his lair.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">In Babylonian halls to-night<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are strains of mirth and flashing light,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The sheen of satin, gleaming gems<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In scores of priceless diadems;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">These are the butterflies, the drones,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Vampires who feed on blood and bones.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ah, cruel parasites, beware,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One victim of your wrong is there.<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The London skies are black with cloud<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">As by the despot’s citadel<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">A hand from Shannon fires the shell.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">England, to thee and thine belongs<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The memory of uncounted wrongs<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That, multiplied through all the years,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Can turn the wrath thou hast defied<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Thy future sky is overcast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Thy halcyon days forever past,<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm<br /></span>

-<span class="i3">Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_180" id="page_180">{180}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM" id="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM"></a>AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>VENGING, though dim, with the dust of inaction,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885" id="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885"></a>CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>HRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We should be happy&mdash;for Christmas is here.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We have no heart for festivities gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_181" id="page_181">{181}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Oh, dear! what will become of us?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Will they blow up every man or but some of us?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Give us a rest&mdash;we are pining away.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To the dread terrors that nightly control<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For we may not place a moment’s dependency<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">O Lord! but the immensity<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Splits through the dullest official head’s density,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Turning our locks into premature gray.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When it may shortly be scattered around,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With scarce a prospect&mdash;oh future precarious!<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That a brass button would ever be found?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Oh, dear! is there a river in<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Each beating heart that is left above ground?<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_182" id="page_182">{182}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885" id="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885"></a>IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_183" id="page_183">{183}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR" id="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR"></a>JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN BULL looked haggard and drear<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">With fear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As the bells rang out the old year,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">“Oh, dear!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">It’s queer.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“With Hans I would like to agree,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">For he<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is an inch or two taller than me,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">You see;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_184" id="page_184">{184}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Mit glee.’<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Is gay<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">At my numerous signs of decay<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Each day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He snaps his fingers right under my nose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And has not a pitying word for my woes<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">To say.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“I once could warn Ivan the bear&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Take care<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How the lion you stir in his lair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Beware!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Out there.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“But my worst and my ugliest fright,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">A sight<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That keeps me in shivering plight<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">All night,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">His might!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_185" id="page_185">{185}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“So for me there’s no Happy New Year,<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Oh, dear!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But doubt, and misgiving, and fear<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">Are here.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They cuff me before and they kick me behind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in all the world not a friend can I find<br /></span>

-<span class="i15">To cheer!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="READY_AND_STEADY" id="READY_AND_STEADY"></a>READY AND STEADY.<br /><br />

-<small>A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>EADY, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">You must decide in the dawning new year.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Comrade or foeman?&mdash;your choice must be made;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Neither has room for a neutral brigade.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">There is no welcome or place for you here;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Arms but of you men&mdash;fearless and true men&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Strike the last blow in the coming new year.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_186" id="page_186">{186}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Victory marches, but never despair;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then, be your story sadness or glory,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED" id="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED"></a>WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>O you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable

-of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly

-busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.</p>

-

-<p>You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the

-landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any

-overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of

-income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad

-luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,

-and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police

-in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered

-on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their

-money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent

-collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been

-easily managed without a peeler at all, but the land<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_187" id="page_187">{187}</a></span>lords wanted bad to

-force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from

-them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in

-and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.</p>

-

-<p>So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by

-playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at

-their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting

-fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture

-outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each

-other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date

-lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,

-and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain

-Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they

-were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner

-recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”

-and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special

-correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like

-journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be

-dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,

-blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in

-Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from

-the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible

-state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar

-contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings

-of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole <i>corps d’armee</i> and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_188" id="page_188">{188}</a></span>

-part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs

-and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised

-to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,

-Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that

-head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he

-didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his

-walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly

-have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have

-found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.</p>

-

-<p>Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the

-parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,

-in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever

-distilled in these parts&mdash;and that’s a big word. The still was away

-somewhere in the mountains,&mdash;it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into

-geographical details,&mdash;and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger

-between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the

-towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to

-the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,

-and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe

-that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of

-that.</p>

-

-<p>Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and

-one day some sleeveen&mdash;it was never found out who the stag was&mdash;came

-into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_189" id="page_189">{189}</a></span> Moran had

-guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew

-that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat

-had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and

-as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband

-material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if

-he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of

-dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no

-position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might

-be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his

-brain.</p>

-

-<p>In five minutes he was <i>en route</i> for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary

-men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did

-find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried

-consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen

-which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,

-and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of

-whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was

-lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,

-awaiting the crisis.</p>

-

-<p>The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The

-search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and

-seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They

-sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem

-examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with

-their bay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_190" id="page_190">{190}</a></span>onets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander

-went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He

-found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back

-with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.</p>

-

-<p>Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung

-to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.</p>

-

-<p>“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his

-foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first

-object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and

-poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.</p>

-

-<p>“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very

-bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this

-blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck

-on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;

-and now&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the

-house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with

-his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a

-pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He

-would have been left in the cold that day.</p>

-

-<p>You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran

-fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to

-Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.

-He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_191" id="page_191">{191}</a></span> would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who

-heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp

-of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There

-never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold

-of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,

-eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly

-ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur

-and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept

-upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His

-tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could

-utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him

-how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives

-it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to

-accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a

-[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]

-bad habit.”</p>

-

-<p>“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has

-been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has

-wasted his opportunities.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank

-[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I

-can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, &mdash;&mdash; my eyes!”

-[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].</p>

-

-<p>“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_192" id="page_192">{192}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<p>“How the &mdash;&mdash; [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and

-theological disquisitions] can I?”</p>

-

-<p>His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough

-scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of

-an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to

-Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a

-note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two

-three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of

-pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand

-and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he

-wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with

-himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions

-every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife

-that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over

-a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the

-arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had

-parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and

-didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better

-half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he

-offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this

-side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.</p>

-

-<p>His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his

-report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him

-sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_193" id="page_193">{193}</a></span>

-archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The

-reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into

-a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.

-Strange story, ain’t it?</p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI" id="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI"></a>THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a><br /><br />

-<small>BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>HASTLY white with affright,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Down stairs they thundered,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Peelers and grenadiers&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nearly a hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Out of doors shrieking loud<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Rushed the scared hundred,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They had no wish to be<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Blown up or sundered.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Wildly in flight they sped&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Disgruntled hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Bang! went that bombshell near,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Were they o’ercome with fear?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You bet your boots they were&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">All of the hundred;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_194" id="page_194">{194}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Theirs not to question why<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Roof soared aloft to sky&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Theirs but to cut and fly<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Sensible hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Women to right of them,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Women to left of them,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Children in front of them<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Fainted or wondered;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But they were trained too well&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They knew what meant that shell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So with a gruesome yell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Head over heels, pell-mell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Scattered the hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Did they flash sabres bare<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Out on the trembling air?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No, they just left them there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">There to be plundered;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And through the struggling mass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Matron and babe and lass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Plunged and strove hard to pass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Choking and gasping&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Ah, horrified hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Glass smashed to right of them,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Beams flew to left of them,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Walls gaped in front of them,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Shattered and sundered;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All round the citadel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Stormed by that awful shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_195" id="page_195">{195}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Plaster and brickbats fell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Down on their heads in storms.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, it was worse than hell;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Out over prostrate forms<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Charged all the hundred.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When shall the record fade<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of the quick time they made?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">All the world wondered.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Greyhound or Arab steed<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Could not excel the speed<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Of that swift hundred.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES" id="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES"></a>AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_196" id="page_196">{196}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The iron has entered your souls, and forever<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">May it brand you as craven and false to your race;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">May the years that roll by bring oblivion never<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">By coating in slime every link of your chain.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The people and ye are no longer the same,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And every heart where one flickering ember<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_197" id="page_197">{197}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER" id="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER"></a>EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">F</span>OR enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to

-“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American

-newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of

-one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,

-if we are to believe his friends.</p>

-

-<p>Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed

-scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.</p>

-

-<p>When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event

-on the bandages.</p>

-

-<p>When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange

-demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his

-trombone.</p>

-

-<p>He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_198" id="page_198">{198}</a></span> engraven on blocks of

-ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway

-collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the

-mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after

-the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.</p>

-

-<p>But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few

-years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked

-up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of

-making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage

-soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the

-ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African

-substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for

-luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.</p>

-

-<p>Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to

-take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out

-for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of

-night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded

-its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of

-adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s

-kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.</p>

-

-<p>He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once

-half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and

-toothsome brown; still he had survived.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_199" id="page_199">{199}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable

-adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory

-since Stanley had left.</p>

-

-<p>Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by

-such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero

-in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on

-their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked

-backs.</p>

-

-<p>Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the

-speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an

-escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but

-for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of

-the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!</p>

-

-<h2><a name="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED" id="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED"></a>A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">H</span>E was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the

-cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common

-herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations

-that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he

-wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the

-principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them

-for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of

-England,” “the President of France,” “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_200" id="page_200">{200}</a></span> King of Italy,” “the Emperor

-of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.

-He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual

-appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the

-saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;

-Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on

-all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had

-planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the

-knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s

-destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy

-morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,

-sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit

-him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”</p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION" id="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION"></a>THE LION’S LAMENTATION.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HEY are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Over the frontier they’re swarming;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">But grin as if its melody were charming;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Really, the prospect is alarming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_201" id="page_201">{201}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Except he be a Corydon or Carey.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Am I not your father and your mother?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">All the dudes of London your image will caress,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">And we’ll be the world to one another.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And&mdash;my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">That d&mdash;d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_202" id="page_202">{202}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="MEMORIAL_ODE" id="MEMORIAL_ODE"></a>MEMORIAL ODE<br /><br />

-<small>TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E meet to-night to greet a name<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Symbolical for fifty years<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To mingle with the empty glee<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of laugh and cheer from English throat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A new tone in this Jubilee,&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A strong, discordant, Irish note.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i0">What has she done for us or ours;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That in her garlanding of flowers<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">We should conceal our Irish chain?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When on the dreary roadside lying<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Were babe and mother faint and dying,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When heaped were nameless Irish graves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When every blast<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That swept the mast<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of fever ship was moaning, sighing<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The story of an awful crime<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That ringing down the aisles of Time<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Has filled the universe with song&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What act of mercy, gentle, human,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_203" id="page_203">{203}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What deed of grace to prove her woman,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What sign gave she that Irish true man<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Could treasure in his heart to be<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A token of her Jubilee?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i0">She came when but one spring had spread<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Its buds above our dark decay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around, among, between the dead,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Her idle, pompous journey lay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She saw a million graves, but shed<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">No tear to wash the sin away.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Before or since what ear hath heard<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In all our years of dark eclipse<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One feeble protest, or a word<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of pity from her queenly lips.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nay, when our fearsome famine wail<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he stretched hand to save the Gael,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Her jealous pride returned his dole.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza2">

-<span class="i0">For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i0">A faithful mother&mdash;so the bear<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That rends the bleating lamb apart,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And brings it with her cubs to share,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Betrays a fond, maternal heart.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza2">

-<span class="i0">And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_204" id="page_204">{204}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A faithful wife&mdash;from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert&mdash;poor Myles Joyce.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a><br /></span>

-

-<span class="i0">And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">At memory of the loved ones lost&mdash;butchered in this half-century’s reign.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims of landlord wrath;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the Atlantic’s lonely path;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back from the scaffold’s gloom;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of madhouse and union tomb;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to West over every sea,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march in her Jubilee.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands and swear to-night<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm, through good and ill,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_205" id="page_205">{205}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_ORANGE_ORATION" id="AN_ORANGE_ORATION"></a>AN ORANGE ORATION.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find

-the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are

-Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from

-Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German

-independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to

-the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of

-the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the

-persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as

-steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of

-the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious

-nation&mdash;Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,

-Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant

-nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so

-irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the

-voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a

-description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in

-love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they

-are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will

-find his natural place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_206" id="page_206">{206}</a></span> in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the

-benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent

-features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.</p>

-

-<p>Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in

-Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far

-penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,

-as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well

-testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything

-connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of

-superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest

-a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a

-lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence

-to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that

-England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently

-the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical

-composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a

-notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to

-shun everything green as he would the small-pox&mdash;there was only one

-color for a devout Christian to patronize&mdash;orange. God had not decorated

-the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful

-tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,

-when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose

-ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an

-Orangeman of the deepest purple<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_207" id="page_207">{207}</a></span> dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural

-and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his

-heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie

-down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp

-to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions

-on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old

-woman who declined to shout “To h&mdash;with the Pope” at his modest request.</p>

-

-<p>He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,

-of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that

-awakens the enthusiasm of his class:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>“Brethren&mdash;We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of

-the great, the glorious, the pious, and the&mdash;the&mdash;the Orange-headed

-William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,

-I&mdash;I&mdash;as a matter of fact I&mdash;I&mdash;get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time

-in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity

-to&mdash;to&mdash;to, in short&mdash;drink his memory&mdash;that is to say, to drink&mdash;to

-drink&mdash;to&mdash;oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes

-are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they

-swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,

-and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but

-are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their

-toes&mdash;their big toes&mdash;upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass

-this&mdash;this&mdash;this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put

-down, to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_208" id="page_208">{208}</a></span> certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious

-gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls&mdash;of&mdash;of&mdash;well, they

-struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants

-won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more

-nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into

-Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has

-departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid

-believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.

-(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the

-sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and

-whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us

-and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill

-your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory

-of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;

-here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey

-with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of

-England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to

-glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of

-Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,

-bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of

-diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in

-the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free

-fights.)<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_209" id="page_209">{209}</a></span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL" id="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL"></a>SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HAT Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Had a rule so universal as I claim?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">As my ensign of destruction and of shame?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My dominion rules their bodies not alone,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And their future, as their present, is my own.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His tortured slaves in death at last were free.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Belongs for all eternity to me.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">If he once began to worship at my shrine<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_210" id="page_210">{210}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Do not give the drunkard time to even think.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Common helots struggle madly to be free,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I whet the murderer’s knife&mdash;rob mother, children, wife&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS" id="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS"></a>CONTRARY COGNOMENS.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_211" id="page_211">{211}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING" id="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING"></a>AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>NGELINA Seraphina<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Wilhelmina Murphy,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See on knees here Ebenezer<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Julius Cæsar Durphy.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To a dozen ladies,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Rose and Ella, Annabella,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And Mirella Bradys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_212" id="page_212">{212}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What to me now e’er can be now<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Hippolita Flanagan?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or sweet Dora Leonora<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Otherwise O’Branagan?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Anastatia Hoolahan?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or Miranda Alexandra<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">May Amanda Woolahan?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Roderigo Paul Diego<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Burke may try his part again;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or Bernardo Leonardo<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Furey seek your heart again.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Just espouse my cause, my dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And I swear I’ll give our heir<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A name to break your jaws, my dear!<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM" id="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM"></a>THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>E slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_213" id="page_213">{213}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">His dream was changed: again he stood&mdash;and she was by his side,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_214" id="page_214">{214}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,&mdash;but now in death!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_215" id="page_215">{215}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="FREDERICKS_FOLLY" id="FREDERICKS_FOLLY"></a>FREDERICK’S FOLLY.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from

-Rathmines,&mdash;which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of

-the Hibernian metropolis,&mdash;there boarded, lodged, and sent out his

-washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young

-gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in

-that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer

-walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day

-whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To

-spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose

-to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the

-clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his

-official signature.</p>

-

-<p>Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was

-also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his

-landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling

-Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.

-But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a

-quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his

-face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less

-susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.

-He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He

-would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_216" id="page_216">{216}</a></span> fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine

-weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &amp;

-Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to

-change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut

-article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a

-countess.</p>

-

-<p>He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having

-time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.

-He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British

-Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being

-subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four

-dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.

-Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely

-got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium

-before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not&mdash;well, not quite

-a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly

-martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or

-the&mdash;hem&mdash;nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.</p>

-

-<p>“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial

-artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of&mdash;I mean as the

-raven’s wing.”</p>

-

-<p>Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought

-of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the

-dye.</p>

-

-<p>“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the

-scissors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_217" id="page_217">{217}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed

-sort of a mustache&mdash;what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and

-odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between

-the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the

-coiffeur’s opinion.</p>

-

-<p>“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a

-beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”</p>

-

-<p>A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.</p>

-

-<p>“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of

-your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the

-lather-pot.</p>

-

-<p>They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar

-remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the

-principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed

-with his evil genius.</p>

-

-<p>“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as

-a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”</p>

-

-<p>Alas! He took the Depilatory.</p>

-

-<p>“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the

-curling-tongs.</p>

-

-<p>No, he wasn’t.</p>

-

-<p>“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.

-Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”</p>

-

-<p>Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming

-monotonous. However, he admitted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_218" id="page_218">{218}</a></span> that the speculator who bought his

-teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a

-fortune by the investment.</p>

-

-<p>“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your

-teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look

-gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.

-Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”</p>

-

-<p>Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic

-talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair

-dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had

-arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every

-now and then <i>en route</i>, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the

-bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He

-was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then

-another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for

-about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the

-last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,

-he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking

-hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he

-volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know

-him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s

-astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic

-personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the

-house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the

-domestic doorstep, replied<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_219" id="page_219">{219}</a></span> emphatically, “I should rather think so!”

-upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.</p>

-

-<p>When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that

-Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting

-his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of

-supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below

-Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred

-gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that

-there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on

-the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested

-himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.</p>

-

-<p>At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning

-sob of fate, the candle went out!</p>

-

-<p>For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more

-composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,

-he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little

-Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his

-with envy and chagrin?</p>

-

-<p>He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined

-friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet

-requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his

-jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of

-Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a

-sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He

-tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_220" id="page_220">{220}</a></span> imperial? Why not?

-He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration

-complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little

-Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber&mdash;to dream he had

-Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the

-Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.</p>

-

-<p class="dttsc">. . . . . . . . .</p>

-

-<p>Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when

-Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer&mdash;that last toddy, no

-doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.

-Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of

-civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out

-upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that

-made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the

-last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating

-madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable

-officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a

-square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police

-manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,

-and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with

-a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that

-he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of

-his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other

-assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he

-promptly turned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_221" id="page_221">{221}</a></span> nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched

-forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,

-chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a

-varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded

-them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in

-wild and dripping confusion.</p>

-

-<p>That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an

-excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and

-there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque

-night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut

-lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his

-nose&mdash;cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird

-melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”</p>

-

-<p>It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his

-teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning

-over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his

-curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head

-altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction

-of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its

-growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had

-invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so

-renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of

-a walnut escritoire.</p>

-

-<p>Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had

-anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is

-now another’s.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_222" id="page_222">{222}</a></span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="CONSTABLE_X" id="CONSTABLE_X"></a>CONSTABLE X.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HOSE walk is so stately and grand round the beat?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And kisses the book with a resonant smack,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he, even he, that great creature, has known<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_223" id="page_223">{223}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has even unbended to laughter and sport,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY" id="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY"></a>LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>URROUNDED by bottles and flagons and bowls,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Devil pursued his terrible task.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hatred and lust, and all the horde<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when it was brimming with fever and sin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Another flask in his hand he raised<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Doses of poverty, doses of crime,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For every region, for every clime,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_224" id="page_224">{224}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And then a barrel he seized to fill<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With grief and affliction, pain and ill;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till God’s image became but a senseless log,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the demon yell as each toper fell,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN" id="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN"></a>THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>M I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_225" id="page_225">{225}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That muscle and brain were contented below;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For a very small gift from our riches contents<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But now there’s a muttering startling and strange<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A really absurd and ridiculous plan<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To ostracize gold and to dignify man;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The base common herd won’t submit any more<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To a rule that their fathers found proper before,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the veriest scum of the gutters invents<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS" id="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS"></a>WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.<br /><br />

-<small>AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NCE again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_226" id="page_226">{226}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Mists and clouds of two long decades&mdash;picture visions far away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_227" id="page_227">{227}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_228" id="page_228">{228}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE" id="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE"></a>THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>REAT chieftain, o’er thy silent clay<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Grief knows no frontier line to-day.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Among the gifts the nation showers<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A shamrock wreath among the flowers.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">A type its emerald leaflets three<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of thy best attributes will be&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Faith, Courage, and Humanity.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Courage that with disaster rose,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Mercy to brave but beaten foes.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In her defence with thee and thine<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our exiled race were found in line.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">With thee we bore the storm and stress,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hard-fought retreat and onward press<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_229" id="page_229">{229}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Thy eagle glances oft might scan<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our Celtic features in the van<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When battle surged round Sheridan.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And never poured the crimson flood,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To mark where desperate valor stood,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">So as your life-stream then we fed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Where’er your own brave nation bled,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our tears to-day with hers are shed.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our grief now sobs with your regrets,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our shamrocks fringe your violets.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="MAINE_AND_MAYO" id="MAINE_AND_MAYO"></a>MAINE AND MAYO.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>IX months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_230" id="page_230">{230}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“I’m very glad to meet ye&mdash;I’m a stranger from Mayo.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_231" id="page_231">{231}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_232" id="page_232">{232}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH" id="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH"></a>A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>ANDY ROW, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in

-Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its

-true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,

-the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from

-prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To

-h&mdash;with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its

-consecrated&mdash;whiskey consecrated&mdash;shore, that Papist foot would be

-carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it

-contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of

-the desecrated pavement.</p>

-

-<p>In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one

-Green&mdash;Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and

-immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread

-as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan

-Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in

-more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional

-anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his

-campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable

-commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,

-but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has

-suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half

-a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_233" id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in

-consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his

-back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,

-banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,

-blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National

-League invaders.</p>

-

-<p>For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners

-and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an

-assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal

-principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no

-salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.</p>

-

-<p>During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of

-Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a

-howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given

-musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent

-continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval

-for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor

-gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a

-short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’

-duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red

-Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached

-the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the

-influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with

-the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_234" id="page_234">{234}</a></span> scales and

-variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in

-scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into

-which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with

-heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,

-and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;

-and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,

-and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening

-lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear

-at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs

-in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted

-yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the

-thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass

-kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,

-ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that

-you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.</p>

-

-<p>From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there

-isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or

-symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call

-it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about

-four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.</p>

-

-<p>The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to

-this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this

-systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old

-boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_235" id="page_235">{235}</a></span>up culinary

-utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established

-a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been

-exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate

-measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.

-They were adopted.</p>

-

-<p>Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order&mdash;each

-man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander&mdash;a

-kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously

-maddening marauders!</p>

-

-<p>Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,

-rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.</p>

-

-<p>Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving

-stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.</p>

-

-<p>The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and

-completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.</p>

-

-<p>Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a

-marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long

-cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.</p>

-

-<p>Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord

-Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes

-and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?</p>

-

-<p>About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis

-commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they

-had got through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_236" id="page_236">{236}</a></span> the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some

-Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his

-night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.</p>

-

-<p>Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly

-raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly

-perfected.</p>

-

-<p>It was dark,&mdash;so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent

-choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle

-rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.</p>

-

-<p>Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught

-a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering

-gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a

-step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled

-round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a

-hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,

-and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different

-cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical

-training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,

-paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.</p>

-

-<p>Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,

-like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in

-the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by

-Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of

-the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron

-spirit of Mrs. T.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_237" id="page_237">{237}</a></span> was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower

-of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he

-turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the

-grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels

-off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the

-air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all

-the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon

-his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.</p>

-

-<p>The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new

-veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the

-Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been

-witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the

-spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of

-pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and

-the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out

-by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men

-that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with

-pickaxes and shovels.</p>

-

-<p>Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111

-forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a

-tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He

-thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain

-their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for

-carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with

-the contents of a tinker’s budget&mdash;why, he’ll join the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_238" id="page_238">{238}</a></span> Fenians, that’s

-all. They have one motto he appreciates:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HETHER on the scaffold high,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or in the battle’s van,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The fittest place for man to die<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Is where he dies for man.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<p>That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an

-old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not

-going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.

-1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Here lies the body of Billy Green,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As true a grand master as ever was seen,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But although he was green and decidedly fat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">cat.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE" id="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE"></a>THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.<br /><br />

-<small>A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">D</span>OWN by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_239" id="page_239">{239}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Curses in purest American; such<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Room for the rest of the languages&mdash;there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Naught but profanity ever in vogue,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">God has ordained they should travel together,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sunshine and harmony&mdash;natural growth.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Right down among us he stepped: all the while<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sang at our windows for all they were worth&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Nobody hunted the right or left bower;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Deserts put verdure on&mdash;one little flower<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s <i>thurrum pogue</i><a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_240" id="page_240">{240}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="ARAB_WAR_SONG" id="ARAB_WAR_SONG"></a>ARAB WAR SONG.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>LLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doom<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And their valor will scatter his merciless bands<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Their fury will break on his terrified host<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Is melting before our wild charges in spray;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_241" id="page_241">{241}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Better freedom in death than existence in chains.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Strike swiftly, and spare not&mdash;yon turbanless crowd<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK" id="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK"></a>HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block

-were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and

-what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a

-completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.

-Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.

-His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his

-place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have

-them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night

-to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.

-He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his

-gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful

-jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby

-through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay

-at the parlor door by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_242" id="page_242">{242}</a></span> ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to

-take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue

-of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen

-variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him

-as a signal to chaw him up&mdash;under such circumstances one don’t feel

-inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.</p>

-

-<p>Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of

-life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of

-the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You

-never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some

-horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to

-envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had

-with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered

-hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power

-sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in

-a sling for a fortnight afterwards.</p>

-

-<p>Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all

-kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded

-slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he

-believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life

-that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest

-his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring

-his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him

-half an hour to sit down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_243" id="page_243">{243}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion

-is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has

-carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in

-a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in

-a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he

-would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he

-has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he

-thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another

-crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred

-or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and

-didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round

-about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the

-mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a

-picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked

-before&mdash;that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s

-sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking

-attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve

-his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has

-travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic

-arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that

-he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not

-to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.

-With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going

-over his half-dozen ordinary albums it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_244" id="page_244">{244}</a></span> is really magnificent to be able

-to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his

-remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he

-can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs

-of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN" id="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN"></a>NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> HAVE never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.</p>

-

-<p>I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.</p>

-

-<p>There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,

-who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my

-marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my

-string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.</p>

-

-<p>I thirsted for his blood.</p>

-

-<p>I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my

-part&mdash;in fact, it took several parts of me.</p>

-

-<p>I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled

-my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to

-complete the structure.</p>

-

-<p>Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of

-boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was

-illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,&mdash;the position.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_245" id="page_245">{245}</a></span> Figure

-2,&mdash;one for his nob. Figure 3,&mdash;the body blow. Figure 4,&mdash;the return.

-Figure 5,&mdash;the upper cut. Figure 6,&mdash;the cross-counter.</p>

-

-<p>I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,

-till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of

-P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or

-whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could

-have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”</p>

-

-<p>But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults

-with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed

-my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered

-“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the

-bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders

-and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a

-conquering hero.</p>

-

-<p>At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment

-had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself

-to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me

-when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his

-head.</p>

-

-<p>He came.</p>

-

-<p>I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the

-proper figures for the various stages of the battle.</p>

-

-<p>I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the

-improvised ring, tied a handker<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_246" id="page_246">{246}</a></span>chief for a belt round my waist, and

-wanted to shake hands <i>a la</i> Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.</p>

-

-<p>Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another

-figure&mdash;which happened to be me.</p>

-

-<p>“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,

-because it resulted in two or three for <i>my</i> nob, and while I was trying

-to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,

-“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the

-regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something

-came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground

-with the back of my head.</p>

-

-<p>I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called

-“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had

-to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my

-left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill

-soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I

-sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the

-other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared

-“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp&mdash;“He won’t let me,” before there

-was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,

-and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.</p>

-

-<p>I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen

-to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green

-sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more

-diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_247" id="page_247">{247}</a></span></p>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY" id="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY"></a>THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.</h2>

-

-<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few

-years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,

-who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of

-all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a

-student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and

-bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from

-a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of

-it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that

-crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest

-knocked him out in one short round.]</p></div>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Dr. Blank we shall call him&mdash;a Crichton was he;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not a science or language earth ever has known<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany&mdash;these<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Theology, Medicine, Strategy&mdash;pshaw!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Which left intellects minor some eras behind.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Dons of the College&mdash;our doctor could boast<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An intimate knowledge of every tongue<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_248" id="page_248">{248}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not his be the blame&mdash;no, the odium must rest,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA" id="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA"></a>A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> WOULD sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under

-the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so

-dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs

-up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for

-that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there

-that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home

-are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the

-executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic

-dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a

-conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not

-be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed

-a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his

-drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_249" id="page_249">{249}</a></span> of the day. I had

-barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey

-wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a

-red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a

-miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,

-a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various

-stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied

-articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with

-thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the

-two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags

-and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to

-guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced

-to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the

-odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the

-kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every

-contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started

-homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such

-stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear

-of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the

-irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was

-blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few

-dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney

-pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a

-garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_250" id="page_250">{250}</a></span>

-native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the

-situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,

-and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude

-of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,

-vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at

-irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and

-such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to

-count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It

-would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my

-top-coat was like!</p>

-

-<h2><a name="PEGGY_OSHEA" id="PEGGY_OSHEA"></a>PEGGY O’SHEA.<br /><br />

-<small>AN IRISH SERENADE.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i4"><span class="letra">T</span>HE pale moon is beaming,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">The bright stars are gleaming.<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Awake from thy dreaming,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Acushla, arise!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">For sure the moon’s light, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Though vivid an’ bright, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Is but darkest night, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">Compared with your eyes.<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Glimmerin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Shimmerin’,<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza2">

-<span class="i0">Down in the river there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_251" id="page_251">{251}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i4">See, your own thrue love<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Is waitin’ for you, love,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">So waken anew, love,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">An’ gladden my sight!<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Don’t keep me quakin’ here,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">All the long night;<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Quiverin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Shiverin’,<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza2">

-<span class="i0">Faith it’s Decimber, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Freezes me, teases me&mdash;darlin’ don’t stay;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza1">

-<span class="i4">This morn had you been, love,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">With me, you’d have seen, love,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">A new dress of green, love,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">I bought&mdash;for, you mind,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">But last week you said, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">You hated the red, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i4">So get out of bed, dear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i6">An’ let down the blind!<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Shyly,<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Slyly,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Creep to the window now,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_252" id="page_252">{252}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i8">Why have you waited<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">So long, whin you stated<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">To me that you hated<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">The red of our foes?<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">While you are keepin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">Me here with your sleepin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i8">The color is creepin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">All over my nose!<br /></span>

-<span class="i20">Face it,<br /></span>

-<span class="i20">Chase it,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Meet it with bravery,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i10">Och, you are there now,<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">So purty and fair now,<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">I raley declare, now<br /></span>

-<span class="i12">I’m murthered outright;<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">My mouth seems like butter,<br /></span>

-<span class="i12">I hardly can mutter<br /></span>

-<span class="i10">A sintince, or utter<br /></span>

-<span class="i12">A word, love, to-night.<br /></span>

-<span class="i14">Thumpin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i14">An’ bumpin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_253" id="page_253">{253}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT" id="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT"></a>THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was one poor limping creature&mdash;the embodiment of pain.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I questioned him&mdash;this blighted one&mdash;I asked him what the reason<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_254" id="page_254">{254}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Don’t my uniform tell you that I<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Am of the unfortunate band,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whom you see day by day passing by,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Never pausing a moment to stand;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who, in one perpetual round,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Forever are marching, until<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">It seems that while one of us stays overground<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Fate ordains he shall never be still.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Tis hard when the bright golden sun<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Smiles out from a clear azure sky,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Till his glory has gone and passed by.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And e’en along green country lanes,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Who would care to be tramping all day?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Then why do you wonder to hear<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">An unlucky sad mortal complain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or say, are you looking for smiles<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">From a fellow who feels on the rack,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">After walking some twenty odd miles<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On a path like a porcupine’s back?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“They say that the Muscovite knout,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">On the back of a troublesome peasant,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When wielded by hands that are stout,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Is decidedly very unpleasant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_255" id="page_255">{255}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Caused aught but delightful sensations,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But what were their tortures of old,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Compared to our new innovations?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“No martyr that ever yet died<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In those times that have long passed away,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">My feet are denuded of skin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My toes every one are disjointed,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the most of our pavement is pointed!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">“Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Save where an occasional flaw<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Leaves a hole in to gather the rain&mdash;”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That emptied a neighboring tavern,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He had planted one foot on a peak,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">While the other was lost in a cavern!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then his language assumed such a tone&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And one not by any means sweeter&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That they couldn’t be put into metre.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So thus my sad narrative ends,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">As I left the poor tortured one raving,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_256" id="page_256">{256}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS" id="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS"></a>APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall

-have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s

-mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist

-Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the

-census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and

-on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her

-mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who

-is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage

-in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another

-ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan

-retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last

-column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical

-expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she

-filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,

-blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages

-afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be

-known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively

-on that occasion.</p>

-

-<p>Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary

-difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of

-them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she

-threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_257" id="page_257">{257}</a></span> and her sitting

-weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a

-compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity

-is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,&mdash;occasionally.”</p>

-

-<p>If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal

-position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is

-fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on

-figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her

-appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of

-adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not

-called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or

-so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her

-record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful

-figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at

-that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years

-ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon

-and bottle-feeding.</p>

-

-<p>The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is

-the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it

-for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a

-commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey

-without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and

-lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the

-corner into our street on his return from a mont<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_258" id="page_258">{258}</a></span>h’s absence he is the

-central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young

-Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his

-arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in

-his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.

-He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities

-until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.

-The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success

-as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal

-signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we

-call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,

-John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or

-Theodore&mdash;Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter

-fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we

-feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.

-“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or

-an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you

-short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We

-have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s

-at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,

-and&mdash;” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and

-knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be

-followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some

-of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_259" id="page_259">{259}</a></span> some refuge

-to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling

-whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be

-left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.</p>

-

-<p>But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a

-father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper

-should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist&mdash;there was another

-Robinson <i>en route</i>. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent

-the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came&mdash;in twos, in threes,

-in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,

-and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast

-in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt

-like Noah&mdash;only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the

-dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,

-and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers

-present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had

-been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room

-was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one

-corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the

-twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling

-with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church

-yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and

-he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?

-Send me a volume, four hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_260" id="page_260">{260}</a></span> pages, bound in morocco, forty names on

-a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two

-or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m

-ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,

-let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”

-and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson

-was at home this census time.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN" id="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN"></a>NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>ANK on rank they march together,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Through the lanes and o’er the heather,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the rhythmic ringing beat<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of their measured swinging feet<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Music bears in martial tone<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the land they call their own.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Happy land that proudly boasts,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Not coerced, unwilling hosts,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But around her throne can feel<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hearts whose love no bribes retain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Hands that never strike in vain.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Through the fields of yellow grain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Through the woods of leafy green,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Here and there on many a plain,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Are their snowy targets seen;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the mountains echo back<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">From their peaks the rifles’ crack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_261" id="page_261">{261}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Freedom knows how keen of eye,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Firm of nerve and quick of finger,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are the marksmen brave who vie<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In the skill they freely bring her.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Bunker Hill and Concord tell<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">They have won their laurels well.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And should war assail our shore,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Still to guard it ever ready<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As their fathers were of yore.<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Calm, yet eager, true and steady,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Are the loyal ranks that play<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But at mimic strife to-day.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN" id="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN"></a>A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HEY have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society

-rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.

-E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina

-cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.

-R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical

-instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a

-sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the

-bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of

-“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in

-which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment

-might be dangerous. It might have led<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_262" id="page_262">{262}</a></span> to revolution, and it wouldn’t be

-logical&mdash;or geological&mdash;to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.</p>

-

-<p>I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific

-symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay

-ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of

-antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly

-mastodon.</p>

-

-<p>I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered

-during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour

-or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been

-kind enough to label them&mdash;“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land

-Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the

-Bone Age,” etc.</p>

-

-<p>I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement

-in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell

-what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the

-“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,

-with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been

-told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned

-not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery

-gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the

-whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be

-inspired by the sight of this&mdash;this&mdash;this ancient weapon&mdash;it is

-evidently a spear-head&mdash;which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic

-warrior of old has probably pierced<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_263" id="page_263">{263}</a></span> many a proud invader’s breast. This

-spear-head, ladies and gentlemen&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty

-bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some

-repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the

-pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to

-finish a job outside!”</p>

-

-<h2><a name="JONESS_UMBRELLA" id="JONESS_UMBRELLA"></a>JONES’S UMBRELLA.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past

-week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the

-whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the

-atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable

-character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth

-wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the

-heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses

-of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to

-have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in

-view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a

-scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar

-continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,

-principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford

-shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of

-an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,

-but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_264" id="page_264">{264}</a></span>turb a seam in it.

-It has only one defect. Given sufficient space&mdash;say Yellowstone Park,

-and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when

-Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those

-occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left

-their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the

-umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower

-that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that

-umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the

-street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated

-arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the

-direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones

-held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones

-held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family

-quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops

-that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of

-confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and

-a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed

-and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,

-dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously

-about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It

-was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few

-shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and

-tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed

-by his coat-tails, and sat down once or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_265" id="page_265">{265}</a></span> twice quite unexpectedly in

-Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let

-the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He

-hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow

-restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA" id="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA"></a>LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has

-nearly done for Guffin.</p>

-

-<p>Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his

-nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows

-much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.</p>

-

-<p>Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is

-poetic, she is romantic&mdash;in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,

-and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion

-with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than

-soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the

-prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money&mdash;so far,

-in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts

-it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,

-in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden&mdash;Mrs.

-Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no

-place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre

-when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_266" id="page_266">{266}</a></span>blighted the future of an

-ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of

-pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite

-fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank&mdash;a sort

-of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker

-has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no

-longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future

-porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,

-and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of

-sausages.</p>

-

-<p>The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her

-appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a

-martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.

-They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically

-and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the

-Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most

-vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.

-would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,

-housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,

-donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a

-hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,

-stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning

-to get gray with such orders as&mdash;“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval

-noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et

-demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head

-in the straw, and wonder why he was born.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_267" id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p>

-

-<p>But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame

-aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.

-Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French

-at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told

-him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how

-Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron

-Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter

-performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is

-ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be

-a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell

-on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find

-it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a

-half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin

-can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the

-point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch

-a tent on.</p>

-

-<p>Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and

-when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is

-disappointing.</p>

-

-<p>But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might

-be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very

-much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and

-death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was

-leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against

-her beating heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_268" id="page_268">{268}</a></span> the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes

-turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey

-unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to

-squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the

-only seat that could accommodate her&mdash;the sofa, and looked as

-consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.

-Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched

-him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself

-wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,

-and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a

-half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or

-less, he broke into rebellion.</p>

-

-<p>“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a

-pig in a nightmare?”</p>

-

-<p>“Pig!” shrieked his wife.</p>

-

-<p>“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of

-you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”</p>

-

-<p>“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.

-Julia, order the carriage.”</p>

-

-<p>Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl

-responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.</p>

-

-<p>“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s

-Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you

-have a rasher?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_269" id="page_269">{269}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<p>“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,

-Julia, to quit this abode of&mdash;of&mdash;this abode of&mdash;this maison du diable,

-there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal

-Guffin.</p>

-

-<p>“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be

-in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”</p>

-

-<p>“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up

-la chapeau de mon pere.”</p>

-

-<p>“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.

-And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your

-French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.

-You’ve upset me so much with your d&mdash;&mdash;d rubbishy parley-vooing and

-moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with

-a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if

-you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know

-what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll

-put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front

-door-step all day. D&mdash;&mdash;n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next

-Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll

-begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let

-folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every

-house for two miles around.”</p>

-

-<p>There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their

-French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and

-child flung themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_270" id="page_270">{270}</a></span> upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped

-themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes

-out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the

-elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived

-this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is

-so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution

-of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for

-a shutter.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE" id="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE"></a>CALCRAFT AND PRICE.<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a><br /><br />

-<small>A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H! England’s the gem of the waters,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The pride of the foam-crested sea!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Are always contented and free!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unknown are all want and starvation;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Her subjects are strangers to vice;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the bulwarks of this model nation<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Are Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Wherever this proud nation’s standard<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Unfurls its red folds to the light,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of freedom, and progress, and right.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_271" id="page_271">{271}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Wherever their footsteps have trod,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With the aid of the bayonet and cannon<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">They’ve planted the altar of God!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And the teachers of heretic notions<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Have been silent and quiet as mice,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For fear they should pay their devotions<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Or breathes there a serf who would mutter<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With a sound word or two of advice;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But if Irish, he soon will discover<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">The logic of Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When, horror! you might have been given<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A Republican birthright to own!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Thank God, that your blood is untainted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">You’re subjects of England&mdash;how nice!&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With Calcraft or Governor Price!<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_272" id="page_272">{272}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE" id="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE"></a>ENTITLED TO A RAISE.<br /><br />

-<small>SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HIS is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His blood was cool&mdash;(discipline’s rule)&mdash;he made no moan, so he<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_273" id="page_273">{273}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He is silly, he is loyal,&mdash;he is all a Sub should be,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING" id="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING"></a>THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.<br /><br />

-<small>THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.</small></h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN THOMPSON was a postman who<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And though not deeply read, ’tis true,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Was still a Man of Letters.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He paid attention to one Kate<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Maria Julia Jervis,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But she did not appreciate<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">John Thompson’s Civil Service.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_274" id="page_274">{274}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Nor let my love-suit fail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And don’t Despatch this Mail.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But she replied, in accents grave,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">“I love you not&mdash;decamp!”<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And when he spoke again&mdash;she gave<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Her foot an Extra Stamp.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And cried, “My anger you awake,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your speech on insult borders,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I’m poor, but I would scorn to take<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Your vile Post-office Orders.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And moaned in accents shivery,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Pray pardon its Delivery.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He left the room with footsteps slow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A bitter lesson taught,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And then to counteract the blow,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">A pillar-box he sought.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He felt how foolish was the tact<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">In courtship he had boasted,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And recognized the solemn fact<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That he was badly Posted.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_275" id="page_275">{275}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER" id="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER"></a>SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE cobbler’s always cheerful, though<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His path of life be crost,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">He does not tear his hair in woe,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Whene’er his all is lost.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">He welts a lot, but not the wife<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With whom his lot is cast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Still faithful to the last.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Onward his motto, aye, he strives<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To grasp some other feat,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And in the dullest times contrives<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Somehow to make ends meet.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The world may smite him without cause,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">He never shuns its whacks,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And seldom grumbles at the laws<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That regulate his tax.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">We know but little of the good<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His many acts reveal&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Their understandings heal.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">And a much higher motive yet<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">His generous heart controls,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">You would not see that saint forget<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Their perishable souls.<br /></span>

-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_276" id="page_276">{276}</a></span></div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS" id="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS"></a>A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest

-shanty of Jones, in our street.</p>

-

-<p>“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at

-breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with

-the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the

-domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones

-works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t

-say less; he was afraid to say more.</p>

-

-<p>“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”</p>

-

-<p>Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour

-in question.</p>

-

-<p>“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished

-to know where you spent your evening.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a

-kind of a description of&mdash;you don’t understand these things, Maria, but

-we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I

-thought&mdash;that is, we thought&mdash;a few of us thought, you know&mdash;a whole lot

-of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand&mdash;to&mdash;to

-avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”</p>

-

-<p>“Oh, you consulted, then?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we

-decided on a whole lot of things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_277" id="page_277">{277}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<p>“What time did you decide on breaking up?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish

-financiers&mdash;Baron Rothschild, and&mdash;and the rest of the Rothschilds, and

-the chief rabbis&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve

-been working the oracle&mdash;and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here

-Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining

-matters as lucidly as was necessary.</p>

-

-<p>“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the

-almshouse before you die, at the rate&mdash;the poor rate&mdash;you’re going on.

-What else?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the

-monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal

-of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six

-per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things

-have gone so far that, that&mdash;”</p>

-

-<p>“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took

-your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the

-scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that

-you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about

-the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the

-proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled

-‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in

-the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians

-and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,

-the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_278" id="page_278">{278}</a></span> down in the coal scuttle,

-and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed

-some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried

-to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;

-and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your

-coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,

-you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red

-hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I

-have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for

-five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any

-longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed

-commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a

-remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it

-is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in

-a quiet kitchen in South Boston.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS" id="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS"></a>AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>EIGHO for the morning, murky and dark,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">When, heedless of threatening cloud,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I ventured to visit the green College park,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And mingled along with the crowd.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I am almost now on insanity’s brink,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And this I attribute to<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Either a fairy attired in pink<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or an angel whose robe was blue.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_279" id="page_279">{279}</a></span><br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The world considered my heart was flint,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And futile were womanly wiles&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Glances and glittering smiles.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">My journey of life to go through,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To say nothing of beauty in blue.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Bachelor’s buttons and fare;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">That Benedicts weepingly share.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">To join the Hymeneal crew,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or a lovely commander in blue.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For frivolous chatter and talk;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">I was interested in every race,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Jump and hurdle and walk;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of course it can hardly be true&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">And the mile by a stayer in blue.<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">For I mean in futurity’s days<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When I go to races to cover my eyes<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">With glasses to temper my gaze,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_280" id="page_280">{280}</a></span><br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink<br /></span>

-<span class="i2">Or equally dangerous blue.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<h2><a name="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE" id="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE"></a>A MUSICAL REVENGE.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>’M sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean

-of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is

-oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to

-sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed

-with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,

-and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with

-forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly

-residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly

-utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to

-undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be

-a welcome change.</p>

-

-<p>But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.

-For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers

-of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the

-trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his

-frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a

-fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations

-on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had <i>one</i> night from<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_281" id="page_281">{281}</a></span> me. They

-won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.</p>

-

-<p>I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the

-melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of

-his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my

-cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the

-tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising

-for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed

-successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured

-the presence of a fife and drum&mdash;principally drum&mdash;band from a Grand

-Army post.</p>

-

-<p>The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time

-all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to

-quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants

-of the disturbed district.</p>

-

-<p>But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the

-perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,

-till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or

-instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering

-locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,

-as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each

-artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The

-bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if

-all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s

-interference<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_282" id="page_282">{282}</a></span> with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”

-with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled

-like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had

-never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The

-melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band

-wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of

-its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice

-assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of

-the occasion.</p>

-

-<p>It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division

-of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at

-suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand

-finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within

-half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a

-lifetime.</p>

-

-<p>If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them

-another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.</p>

-

-<h2><a name="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT" id="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT"></a>A LIAR LAID OUT.</h2>

-

-<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who

-certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give

-weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London

-<i>Times</i> in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The

-whoppers that spreader of lies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_283" id="page_283">{283}</a></span> and light can tell would raise the hair

-on the head of an Egyptian mummy.</p>

-

-<p>But he met his match last week.</p>

-

-<p>I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an

-acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of

-course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing

-and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my

-friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that

-he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the

-truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in

-him&mdash;very much in him&mdash;it’s impossible to get it out of him.</p>

-

-<p>I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I

-regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future

-member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all

-there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that

-Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured

-it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the

-Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.</p>

-

-<p>The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a

-strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen

-from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him

-at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden

-legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was

-smoking<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_284" id="page_284">{284}</a></span> it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of

-teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the

-regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own

-gums. He showed it to Dipps.</p>

-

-<p>I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He

-exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured

-out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of

-the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,

-a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express

-purpose of making that stick.</p>

-

-<p>The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had

-another walking-stick at home&mdash;made out of the thigh bone of the

-engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to

-carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and

-would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising

-from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler

-in cold weather to warm himself.</p>

-

-<p>Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be

-put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He

-called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the

-centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a

-diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was

-worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic

-shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_285" id="page_285">{285}</a></span> had passed into Dipps’s

-hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first

-met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel

-Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say

-anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if

-you’re able.”</p>

-

-<p>Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t

-squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary&mdash;it was

-almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a

-companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the

-assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been

-divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,

-and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.</p>

-

-<p>“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom

-Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent

-of the New York <i>Herald</i> Central African tourist pumped that saline

-particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling

-in the interest which it must inspire.”</p>

-

-<p>“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,

-that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic

-treasure?”</p>

-

-<p>“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the

-Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he

-embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley

-<i>didn’t</i> shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_286" id="page_286">{286}</a></span>”</p>

-

-<h2><a name="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE" id="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE"></a>MULROONEY.&mdash;A TROOPER’S TALE.</h2>

-

-<div class="poetry">

-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_287" id="page_287">{287}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair&mdash;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">“By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_288" id="page_288">{288}</a></span>”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”<br /></span>

-</div><div class="stanza">

-<span class="i0">Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">The captain played his cards with skill&mdash;his triumph almost came;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh<br /></span>

-<span class="i0">Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.<br /></span>

-</div></div>

-</div>

-

-<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish

-newspapers, was debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich

-comic cartoons in <i>Pat</i>, the <i>Weekly News</i>, the <i>Weekly Freeman</i>, and

-<i>United Ireland</i>.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the

-Ribbon or Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the

-Speaker or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside

-for twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the

-course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every five

-minutes or so.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester,

-England, for their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy,

-two Fenian leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies

-being refused to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the

-occasion of a demonstration.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and

-Michael Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two

-Fenian leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into

-effect it was not believed that the first political execution since that

-of Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old

-Swan Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger

-brought news of the execution instead.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Allen&mdash;nineteen years old.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> O’Brien&mdash;A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s

-Irish Brigade.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Larkin&mdash;An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on

-Jan. 23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished

-themselves by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to

-Ireland. On the morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses

-above was found posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of

-Ireland. The poem had previously appeared in an American paper.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after

-he had been executed.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Give me a kiss.</p></div>

-

-<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a

-British jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be

-remembered for years.</p></div>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="full" />

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

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+.poem span.i20     {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.pagenum  {font-style:normal;position:absolute;
+left:95%;font-size:55%;text-align:right;color:gray;
+background-color:#ffffff;font-variant:normal;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;text-indent:0em;}
+@media print, handheld
+{.pagenum
+ {display: none;}
+ }
+</style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62180 ***</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="c">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="317" height="500" alt="" />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">An Irish Crazy-Quilt.</span></h1>
+
+<p class="c">SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO
+SONG AND STORY.<br /><br /><br /><small>BY</small><br />
+ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br /><br />
+
+BOSTON:<br />
+ALFRED MUDGE &amp; SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.<br />
+1891.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Copyright,<br />
+1890,<br />
+By</span> ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span>&nbsp;<br /><br /><br />
+
+TO THE<br />
+<br />
+“FELONS” OF IRELAND,<br />
+<br />
+THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Who have been Exiled or Imprisoned or Executed</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Because they Loved their Native Land more than<br />
+Home or Liberty or Life</span>,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="eng">This Volume</span><br />
+<br />
+IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><th colspan="2">SONGS AND BALLADS.</th></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="rt"><span class="smcap"><small>Page.</small></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE">The Church of Ballymore</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_OLD_BOREEN">The Old Boreen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE">The Irish Schoolhouse</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PAT_MURPHYS_COWS">Pat Murphy’s Cows</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FATHER_TOM_MALONE">Father Tom Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#YOU_CAN_GUESS">You Can Guess</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONLY">Only!</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL">Songs of Innisfail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE">The Lord of Kenmare</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE">An Old Irish Tune</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY">Ivan Petrokoffsky</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_EMPERORS_RING">The Emperor’s Ring</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_54">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BLACK_LORIS">Black Loris</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_RED-HEART_DAISY">The Red Heart Daisy</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING">The Tide is Turning</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_OWN_AGAIN">Our Own Again</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL">The Tale of a Tail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS">The Seasick Sub-Commissioners</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY">Clare Constabulary Caione</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX">Clause Twenty-six</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JENKINS_M_P">Jenkins, M. P.</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THADY_MALONE">Thady Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RORYS_REVERIE">Rory’s Reverie</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE">Our Land Shall be Free</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND">The Felons of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION">An Official Valuation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER">A Bewildered Boycotter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION">A Complaint of Coercion</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONEILLS_ADDRESS">O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FENIANS_DREAM">The Fenian’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT">The Speaker’s Complaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ERIN_MACHREE_1798">Erin Machree</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOURS_WISH">Balfour’s Wish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_CAUSE">Our Cause</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SERVED_HIM_RIGHT">Served Him Right</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RAPPAREE_SONG">Rapparee Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND">To the Landlords of Ireland</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOUR_REJOICES">Balfour Rejoices</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_BRIGADE">The Irish Brigade</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST">Faithful to the Last</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG">Fenian Battle Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS">The Grave of the Martyrs</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#DEATHS_VICTORY">Death’s Victory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG">The Green Flag at Fredericksburg</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND">The Flag of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY">Hurrah for Liberty</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MESSENGER">The Messenger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN">John Bull’s Appeal</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB">The Story of a Bomb</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_177">177</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM">Avenging, Though Dim</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885">Christmas Dirge of London Police</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885">Ireland’s Prayer</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR">John Bull’s New Year</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#READY_AND_STEADY">Ready and Steady</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI">The Charge of the Guards</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES">An Address to Slaves</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION">The Lion’s Lamentation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MEMORIAL_ODE">Memorial Ode to Irish Dead</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL">Song of King Alcohol</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONTRARY_COGNOMENS">Contrary Cognomens</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_210">210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING">An Æsthetic Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM">The Drunkard’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONSTABLE_X">Constable X</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LUCIFERS_LABORATORY">Lucifer’s Laboratory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_223">223</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN">The Monopolist’s Moan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS">With the Grand Army Veterans</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE">The Irish Soldier at Grant’s Grave</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MAINE_AND_MAYO">Maine and Mayo</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE">The Priest with the Brogue</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_238">238</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ARAB_WAR_SONG">Arab War Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY">The Linguist of the Liffey</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PEGGY_OSHEA">Peggy O’Shea</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT">The Boston Carrier’s Plaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN">New England’s Marksmen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE">Calcraft and Price</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_270">270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE">Entitled to a Raise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_272">272</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_POSTMANS_WOOING">The Postman’s Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER">Sonnets to a Shoemaker</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_275">275</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS">At the College Sports</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_278">278</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE">Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_286">286</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><th colspan="2">STORIES AND SKETCHES.</th></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TAMING_A_TIGER">Taming a Tiger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RYANS_REVENGE">Ryan’s Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE">A Seditious Slide</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT">Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE">A Double Surprise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PHILIPSONS_PARTY">Philipson’s Party</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS">That Traitor Timmins</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER">A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SNOOKS">Snooks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS">Caledonian Candlesticks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_TYPICAL_TRIAL">A Typical Trial</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED">Why Smithers Resigned</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER">Exploits of an Irish Reporter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED">A Political Lesson Spoiled</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ORANGE_ORATION">An Orange Oration</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FREDERICKS_FOLLY">Frederick’s Folly</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH">A Sandy Row Skirmish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK">Hobbies in Our Block</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_241">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN">Not a John L. Sullivan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA">A Windy Day at Cabra</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS">Apropos of the Census</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN">A Mixed Antiquarian</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_261">261</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JONESS_UMBRELLA">Jones’s Umbrella</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA">Lessons in the French Drama</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS">A Commercial Crisis</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MUSICAL_REVENGE">A Musical Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_280">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_LIAR_LAID_OUT">A Liar Laid Out</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_282">282</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<h1>AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE" id="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE"></a>THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though the roof above its worshippers was low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s&mdash;by the feet of monarchs trod&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With their monumental genius and their lore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In accents that we might not understand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As to think his words not heaven’s own command!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each little modest slab and grassy mound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Desolation was about me, sad and sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am proud of our cathedrals&mdash;they are emblems of our love<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The devil should not have them as his own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their splendor has inspired me&mdash;but amidst it all I prayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_OLD_BOREEN" id="THE_OLD_BOREEN"></a>THE OLD BOREEN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">E</span>MBROIDERED with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It laughed with my joy&mdash;in my moments of sadness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What solace I found in its pitying shade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With sickness and want I have earned only scars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life’s twilight is nearing&mdash;its day disappearing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE" id="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE"></a>AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">U</span>PON the rugged ladder rungs&mdash;whose pinnacle is Fame&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perhaps&mdash;and yet ’tis hard to think&mdash;our boastful modern school<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would scorn his simple ways&mdash;and in the rapid march of mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS" id="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS"></a>PAT MURPHY’S COWS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary
+Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to
+the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited
+roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat
+Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less
+than eleven children.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>N a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole&mdash;a pair of Kerry cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FATHER_TOM_MALONE" id="FATHER_TOM_MALONE"></a>FATHER TOM MALONE.<br /><br />
+<small>A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>AIR white as innocence, that crowned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gentle face which never frowned;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lips framed to counsel and to bless;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A reflex of our native skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through which now tears, now sunshine shone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There you have Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He bade the infant at its birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Cead mille failthe</i> to the earth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With friendly hand he guided youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the thorny track of truth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dying felt, yet knew not why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nearer to Heaven when he was by&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, sure, the angels at God’s throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were friends of Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For us, poor simple sons of toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our one ambition, sole content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to be backward with the rent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our one absorbing, constant fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The agent’s visits twice a year;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had, our hardships to atone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love of Father Tom Malone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One season failed. The dull earth slept.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Despite of ceaseless vigil kept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sign of crop, day after day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To coax it from the sullen clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tubers rotted&mdash;then, oh, shame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We&mdash;’twas the last time ever known&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We had, from fruitful years before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Garnered with care a frugal store;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What were our babes to live upon?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had no seed for coming spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor faintest hope to which to cling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We would have starved without a moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When out spoke Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His voice, so flute-like in the past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“God’s wondrous love doth not intend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hundreds to starve that one may spend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That</i> from mild Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the landlord with a force<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of English soldiers, foot and horse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came down and direst vengeance swore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who met him at the cabin door?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who reasoned first and then defied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thief in all his power and pride?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who won the poor man’s fight alone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, when you point to heroes’ scars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And boast their prowess in the wars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give one small meed of praise, at least,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this poor modest Irish priest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No laurel wreath was twined for him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But pulses throb and eyelids dim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="YOU_CAN_GUESS" id="YOU_CAN_GUESS"></a>YOU CAN GUESS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I first met my fate,&mdash;what it was you can guess.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was under the shade of its bordering trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet it was but a short question to ask.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the question was this&mdash;but I’m sure you can guess.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ONLY" id="ONLY"></a>ONLY!</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NLY a cabin, thatched and gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Only a rose-twined door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a barefooted child at play<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On only an earthern floor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a little brain&mdash;not wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For even a head so small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that is the reason he bitterly cries<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For leaving his home&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only the thought of her girlhood there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And her happier days as wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have endeared them to her for life;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the weeping woman’s cause?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Why are her accents gall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What does she know of our intricate laws?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It was only a hut&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That man with the eyelids dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For sinewy serfs like him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For his heart such a wondrous thrall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He was born in the place&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The years have gone, and the worn-out pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sleep under the stranger’s clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the weeping child with the curly hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is a brave, strong man to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still he thinks of the olden land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And prays for her tyrant’s fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And longs to be one of some chosen band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With only a chance&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL" id="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL"></a>SONGS OF INNISFAIL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE the Austral river rushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through feathery heath and bushes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through its gurgles and its gushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You may hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To your wonder and surprise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet melodies arise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have heard ’neath other skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Low and clear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! within the gold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange to you and cold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voices from the old land<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Swell upon the gale<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lyrics of the story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lit with flames of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dimmed with pages gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where Mississippi leaping<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through valleys fair, is sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the fields of nodding grain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On some mountain path or plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rings a stirring old refrain<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fresh and free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! where’er we wander<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Irish hearts will ponder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er our land, and fonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Throb with ev’ry tale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the home that bore us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the new skies o’er us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Echo with our chorus<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the spray-foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereso’er we may roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughts of far-away home<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Linger still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in dreams we see again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Babbling stream and silent glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forest green and lonely fen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Vale and hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! our hearts’ devotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flies across the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While with deep emotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sternest features pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As around us stealing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softened by sad feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the air are pealing<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="TAMING_A_TIGER" id="TAMING_A_TIGER"></a>TAMING A TIGER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,
+Dublin,&mdash;five of us&mdash;a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.</p>
+
+<p>There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the
+representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay
+amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,
+who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke &amp; Brassey; Tim
+Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing
+stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a
+distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical
+jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome
+kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 <small>A.M.</small> train
+south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance
+of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was
+attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid
+indi<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span>vidual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally
+irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.</p>
+
+<p>“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the
+newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way
+from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks
+we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would
+ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a
+little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him
+out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of
+the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take
+whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me
+see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick
+Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this
+Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and
+Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each
+of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,
+and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,
+will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he
+must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my
+sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What
+do you say, boys?”</p>
+
+<p>Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand
+in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the
+major into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed
+rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the
+compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in
+Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping
+Harry,&mdash;delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble
+servant).</p>
+
+<p>At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all
+manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished
+off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to
+the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,
+swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had
+pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout
+to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe
+Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,
+and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!
+the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now
+the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.</p>
+
+<p>He had killed a panther with his naked hands&mdash;with one naked hand, in
+fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in
+desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its
+tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s
+spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and
+he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior
+recesses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> He tore its heart out, sir,&mdash;its heart,&mdash;and an assortment of
+lungs and ribs and other things.</p>
+
+<p>He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello
+crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his
+waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He
+never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.</p>
+
+<p>At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,
+and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we
+managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that&mdash;down
+in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a
+fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled
+twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized
+atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing
+dumb, my name’s not Boomerang&mdash;Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the
+peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,
+for instance.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach
+of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,&mdash;flay him alive,
+sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember
+Joe Boomerang&mdash;fighting Joe&mdash;as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild
+elephants! I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,
+the&mdash;the&mdash;by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”</p>
+
+<p>Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,
+and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am
+the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your
+abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally
+concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I
+suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will
+oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an
+officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you
+have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”</p>
+
+<p>We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform
+and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like
+an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but
+his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I
+cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D&mdash;&mdash; me, if I will!”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not
+a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with
+perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for
+you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with
+pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him
+in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the
+bullet? People said, you know,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span> that it was the doctors and not Davitt
+that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.</p>
+
+<p>The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man
+in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man
+already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not
+going to be killed&mdash;I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not
+going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as
+if they were snipe.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of
+the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith
+did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting
+Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively
+blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for
+the honor of the service.”</p>
+
+<p>“The service be d&mdash;&mdash;d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a
+kaleidoscope of colors&mdash;red, purple, blue, yellow, and white&mdash;were
+flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like
+this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a
+different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his
+courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead
+of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had
+ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,
+sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them
+that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a light<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span>ning glance
+from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and
+winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar
+and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;
+and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb
+from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”</p>
+
+<p>Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,
+and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a
+cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.
+I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I
+shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that
+I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you
+must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you
+to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The
+prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had
+disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.
+Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone
+got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed
+to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,
+he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he
+has always chosen that so far.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such
+horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing
+outright.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has he&mdash;has he&mdash;I’m not afraid, you know&mdash;ha! ha! Joe Boomerang
+afraid&mdash;capital joke&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;has he killed anybody?”</p>
+
+<p>“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him
+personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,
+matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The
+major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I
+continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both
+pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.
+You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It
+will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,
+but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere
+with my duty.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that&mdash;that&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the
+best. I know an undertaker in Cork&mdash;a decent sort of a chap. We can
+arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the
+first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me
+sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what
+alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I
+remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major
+managed to get hold of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span> enough of his voice to inquire how it came to
+pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as
+duelling.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western
+institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in
+deference to Yankee ideas.”</p>
+
+<p>“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we
+would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang
+of&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the
+car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife
+clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish
+determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter
+collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.
+“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot
+that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and
+glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of
+America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to
+the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m
+bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the
+Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I
+squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the
+blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,
+sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a
+Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span>snub-nosed,
+curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.
+Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena
+from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge
+forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that
+seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made
+a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,
+but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told
+him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,
+having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed
+staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered
+that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for
+his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at
+the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to
+Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.</p>
+
+<p>“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that
+gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to
+Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him
+this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he
+booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’
+thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since
+the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at
+the ould cross roads.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span>” A few days after I read this announcement in the
+Dublin <i>Gazette</i>: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the
+humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident
+magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly
+return to Bengal.”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE" id="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE"></a>THE LORD OF KENMARE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were&mdash;the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="RYANS_REVENGE" id="RYANS_REVENGE"></a>RYAN’S REVENGE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">D</span>URING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most
+exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement
+articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the
+post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,
+for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect
+“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This
+peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional
+association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was
+popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been
+introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain
+refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,
+Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the
+government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the
+indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions
+that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,
+subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span> adopt his invention when they
+had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the
+<i>status quo</i> was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,
+English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his
+reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office
+pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that
+nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.</p>
+
+<p>The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that
+Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical
+visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence
+in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of
+his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted
+county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a
+Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than
+turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof
+that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.
+So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.</p>
+
+<p>For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to
+get muddled,&mdash;his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the
+spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented <i>billet-doux</i> from
+that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue
+envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna
+to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an
+envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes
+being found to contain nothing at all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with
+the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy
+for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent
+sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that
+euphonious cognomen.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state
+indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw
+a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You
+couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.
+If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or
+individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was
+a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the
+shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy
+for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress
+suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good
+harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were
+thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of
+as a blight among the Murphys.</p>
+
+<p>So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed
+to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,
+it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,
+the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central
+bureau of the postal pimpdom. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span> took the clan Murphy into his
+confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy
+in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the
+fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went
+forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many
+letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could
+put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,&mdash;the crops, the
+weather, the price of provisions,&mdash;anything, in fact, or nothing at all.
+The language was of minor importance,&mdash;Irish, however, preferred,&mdash;and
+the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The first day of the interception of <i>the</i> Murphy’s letters, three bags
+full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s
+private sanctum with spare bags.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy
+letters on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking
+Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters
+for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the
+grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to
+the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or
+hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the
+general chaos.</p>
+
+<p>The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service
+Corps, and from 8 <small>A.M.</small> till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were
+blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs
+and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated
+protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for
+Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War
+Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey
+quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the
+intercepted epistles in.</p>
+
+<p>Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,&mdash;the order to
+overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would
+have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the
+task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was
+relieved.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy
+correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed
+to the treacherous waves.</p>
+
+<p>To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up
+a thousand leagues from land,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span> on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir
+William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a
+week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the
+gout.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE" id="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE"></a>AN OLD IRISH TUNE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over the dreams of the slumberers cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The magical spell of a voice from the past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once again in old homes we were children at play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never a ball on its death-mission sped;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It linked with its strains ere they melted away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air seemed to throb with invisible tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HARVEY_DUFF" id="HARVEY_DUFF"></a>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible
+to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the
+different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes
+or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span> of Hamelin.
+“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;
+“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment
+before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
+will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the
+living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself
+a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles
+of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five
+minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because
+he has been killed in the lump.</p>
+
+<p>But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers
+existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is
+none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced
+upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished
+in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican
+convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a
+trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling
+outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but
+if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain
+tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,
+dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,
+hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take
+a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of
+mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will
+amply repay the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span> journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be
+anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well
+to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest
+you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky
+enough to go to hospital.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The
+performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its
+composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated
+with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the
+authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories
+and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”</p>
+
+<p>There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server
+and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular
+“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled
+in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place
+as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally
+difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the
+melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has
+been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to
+submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied
+experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”
+for thirty seconds.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told
+that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,
+returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor
+jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious
+to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time
+to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the
+back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a
+knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the
+harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in
+the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.</p>
+
+<p>In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed
+little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an
+escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,
+and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the
+aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small
+and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle
+something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before
+the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s
+Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and
+bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,
+without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old
+rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen
+might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their
+mouths and their souls in their boots,&mdash;that is, if an Irish policeman
+has either a heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard
+both along with their civilian clothes.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the
+dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic
+entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him
+in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He
+was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer
+was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were
+attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,
+pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man
+aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the
+atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to
+capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.
+Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst
+penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade
+of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that
+strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”
+and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an
+avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told
+Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the
+passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the
+ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,
+twirling and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span> twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon
+the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the
+atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when
+the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the
+crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering
+at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he
+could recover his breath.</p>
+
+<p>I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its
+obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the
+ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and
+it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines
+to that immaculate body:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h3>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h3>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">M</span>Y load of woes is hard to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m losing flesh with dark despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the top of my head is so awfully bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would you the cause be after knowing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That makes me the baldest peeler going,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">If I’ve not heard you often enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was once with a bailiff serving writs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mob malafoostered me for him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the case that circles my brain is thick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When duty has called me miles away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I couldn’t coax dry bread and water<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From father or son, from mother or daughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I always could reckon on more than enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Of you I get more than <i>quantum suff</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And would to the Lord I could collar the muff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To go alone to rebel Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a reckless spirit dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To take a farm that’s vacant there.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know the peasants bold would scatter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My four bones to the wind&mdash;no matter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They’d wake me decent&mdash;no heart so tough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">As I think that my soul will depart in a huff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE" id="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE"></a>A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and
+Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy
+has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have
+been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot
+of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged
+Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly
+thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts
+on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at
+present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and
+happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.</p>
+
+<p>I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings
+in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never
+did any<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span>thing so low or ignoble as to <i>work</i> for their country, and are,
+consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big
+pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the
+refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by
+jingo when we do!”</p>
+
+<p>On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and
+unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the
+heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty
+miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing
+triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the
+Milky Way.</p>
+
+<p>Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of
+an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few
+front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.</p>
+
+<p>I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty
+feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous
+juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving
+that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t
+have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of
+Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to
+either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been
+organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a
+National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through
+my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.</p>
+
+<p>But it is strange how the misfortunes of others recon<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span>cile us to our
+own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my
+soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw
+approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair
+Araminta Higgins.</p>
+
+<p>They were mashing.</p>
+
+<p>He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,
+preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his
+suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,
+and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.</p>
+
+<p>“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true
+to thee as&mdash;as&mdash;as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.
+I am thine&mdash;thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”</p>
+
+<p>At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet
+and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward
+a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane
+observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he
+supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish
+blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a
+coarse laugh.</p>
+
+<p>They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign
+spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two
+prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the
+direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were
+energetically discussing the Na<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span>tional League campaign in Ulster. They
+neared the precipice&mdash;I mean the slide.</p>
+
+<p>“This Parnellite invasion will fail&mdash;utterly fail&mdash;if we remain firm,”
+said the taller of the two, Col. K&mdash;H&mdash;. “Unity and perseverance must be
+our watchwords. United we stand&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head
+rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his
+desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the
+soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted
+energies.</p>
+
+<p>The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known
+attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to
+discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.
+looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in
+every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were
+veritable embodiments of <i>fieri-facias</i>; his stiff, angular collar had
+the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he
+carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and
+processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping
+briskly to destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a
+bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that
+atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal
+documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored
+ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got
+home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking
+for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a
+bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was
+filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.</p>
+
+<p>When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was
+continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the
+North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his
+reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done
+the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”</p>
+
+<p>And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was
+brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the
+policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault
+over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly
+round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the
+policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had
+got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had
+been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and
+constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.</p>
+
+<p>But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we
+going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls
+and chasms to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span> be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,
+and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?
+It’s awful!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY" id="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY"></a>IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>VAN Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is a private&mdash;nothing more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of dying for his country to be happy or content.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_EMPERORS_RING" id="THE_EMPERORS_RING"></a>THE EMPEROR’S RING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sentinel checks his monotonous round.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fresh horse and new pistols&mdash;some phrases of warning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out, out through the forests&mdash;on, on o’er the meadows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While castle and cabin and hamlet and town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor ocean a sheltering island so far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We Russians are brave, but we only are human;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We cower at a power it is death to offend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="BLACK_LORIS" id="BLACK_LORIS"></a>BLACK LORIS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>PURS jingle and lances shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hundred brave horsemen in line;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For why should true hearts repine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pathway is level and balmy the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun has but reached its meridian height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten heroes fight back to back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wolf from the howling pack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ten are scattered; they seem to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like derelict spars in an angry sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never a Cossack was known to yield<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves are engulphing them one by one!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But two remain back to back!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His comrade sinks down with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black Loris is fighting alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his arms as heavy as stone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For answer he sabres the chief of the band.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But his arm is shivered in twain&mdash;he feels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth swim round him&mdash;he gasps, he reels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Black Loris is not alone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No tears for the ninety-nine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The nation’s heart is their shrine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the one man left of the line!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength and glory of Russia depart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of dashing Loris who fought so well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for years to come, when trotting along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ural and Don, men will sing this song&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">“The One and the Ninety-Nine!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT" id="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT"></a>WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?</h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">M</span>R. PHINEAS PHLYNN, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish
+estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic
+nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous
+functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and
+less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by
+his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the
+abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to
+his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his
+neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy
+man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was
+only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed
+property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits
+included an addiction to French<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> wines and Irish whiskey, a decided
+inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures
+at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into
+frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger
+percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.</p>
+
+<p>But how was it to be done?</p>
+
+<p>He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry
+had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in
+mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and
+the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land
+League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master
+about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he
+described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his
+gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious
+bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks
+deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But
+the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.
+Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a
+repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have
+their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console
+Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his
+fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t
+enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant
+degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent
+to guess<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal
+forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a
+crisis. There should be an outrage&mdash;a sanguinary, blood-curdling
+outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent
+carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least
+eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual
+peril.</p>
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion
+of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself&mdash;at least, he shot his
+own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this
+horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact
+that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s
+hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was
+in it or not&mdash;really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so
+tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly
+inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such
+objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat
+on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police
+barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and
+the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his
+dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his
+revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence
+of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforemen<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span>tioned, and poured
+into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of
+his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had
+fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his
+head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!</p>
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country
+was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The
+revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.
+The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the
+government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized
+community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages
+of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information
+that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an
+exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively
+kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes&mdash;a feat
+unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir
+and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown
+had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For
+nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it
+was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence
+given to him as the em<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span>ployer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,
+that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to
+get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would
+become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition
+permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his
+outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London
+detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the
+event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,
+Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,
+Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine
+bargains, left London for Leitrim.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with
+the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of
+the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same
+neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.</p>
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he
+could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work
+of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident
+that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because
+every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been
+arrested, and established their innocence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span> The foreigner who had failed
+would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents
+loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced
+that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking
+measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector
+Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest
+both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names
+of Jones and Brennan.</p>
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong
+reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where is he?” queried Phineas.</p>
+
+<p>“Here.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for
+revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,
+when, why, how&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am
+Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been
+commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> I’ve fished. I
+may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant
+for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and
+whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and
+at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police
+there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve
+trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare&mdash;I have him,
+I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins
+departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the
+unconscious Crawley.</p>
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant
+for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas
+Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no
+time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant
+Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in
+accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in
+Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.</p>
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and
+about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of
+Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span>
+tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,
+too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.
+If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head
+Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the
+Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,
+if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I
+whistled for them.”</p>
+
+<p>It was so arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,
+describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three
+official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened
+and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep
+consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to
+himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding
+the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand
+and the warrant fluttering in his left.</p>
+
+<p>“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he
+ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at
+him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables
+grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a
+racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip
+off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and
+deposit<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span>ing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a
+shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire
+with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to
+receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by
+Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was
+carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells
+and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers
+charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they
+splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred
+skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the
+hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned
+each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms
+and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their
+Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.
+Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among
+the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the
+entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal
+production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully
+unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian
+crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s
+hat.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY" id="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY"></a>THE RED-HEART DAISY.<br /><br />
+<small>A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The storm of wrath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And in its path<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In quivering bodies and distorted faces.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Among the bloody drift of dead and dying<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That strewed the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The searchers found.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some essence from the forms interred together<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Enriched the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">’Neath which they lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough hide and dainty skin&mdash;deep brain and hollow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silver and iron&mdash;Vulcan and Apollo.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The mountain’s crest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Among the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span>
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Those who would make our land a frame of metal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With jewelled heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As thing apart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING" id="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING"></a>THE TIDE IS TURNING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, masters who have ruled so long<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With cruel rods of iron,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who sought with gyves and fetters strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our freedom to environ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In plenitude of sullen power<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our tearful pleadings spurning:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prepare ye for your fated hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beware&mdash;the tide is turning!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! at last we fling the past<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">With all its woes behind us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And stand to-day in firm array<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Against the bonds that bind us.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With brutal grip of tyrant hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye choked our aspirations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made our fertile motherland<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Niobe of nations;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feed the vices of your lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye stole the people’s earning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And held the theft with hireling swords&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But now the tide is turning!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Is tottering to ruin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The Irish race a future face<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">That will not harbor you in!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye kept us chained to ignorance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In fear that education<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might teach our brains the wisest chance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To liberate the nation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, spite of all your guile and thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our people still are learning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What most will tend your yoke to rend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And so the tide is turning.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Each rusty chain is breaking;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The portents smile upon our isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">For Ireland is awaking.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From meadows rich of smooth Kildare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To frowning crags of Kerry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From ocean-girdled shores of Clare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To busy marts of Derry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In our opprest, north, south, east, west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A newer spirit’s burning&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The conquering fire of brave desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That tells the tide is turning.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The light at last is blazing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Till on our brow no serf-brand now<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Can chill a friendly gazing.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_OWN_AGAIN" id="OUR_OWN_AGAIN"></a>OUR OWN AGAIN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE voice of freedom’s sounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From farthest shore to shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Erin’s pulse is bounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With manhood’s blood once more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our sluggard trance is broken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We stand erect as men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our stern demand is spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No futile bribes can stay us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No traitor chiefs control,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wheedling tones delay us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No terrors blanch our soul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gloomy hour has vanished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And gone forever when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We could be crushed or banished&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bluster of the Tories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Whigdom’s tempting lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are vain and foolish stories<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We spurn and we despise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve torn the landlord foeman<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From out his reeking den,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now we’ll halt for no man&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our eyes are lifted sunward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No power can bar our course,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our march must still be onward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spite either guile or force;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be it by the sabre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The voice, the vote, or pen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or steadfast, patient labor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL" id="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL"></a>THE TALE OF A TAIL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE’S a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the time for speech was past&mdash;the knife was mightier than the pen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS" id="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS"></a>THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during
+the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of
+the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on
+the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,
+in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island
+was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for
+over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land
+Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?
+Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.
+The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible
+to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses
+record the exploit:]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With due responsibility on each official breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That their unexpected <i>dejeuner</i> was owing to the Act.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although alternate intervals were taken to allow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY" id="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY"></a>CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ existence will become a dreary void;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall we revel in our customary fun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of scaring all the humble women folk<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ life by common people be enjoyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But we didn’t think you positively cruel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX" id="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX"></a>CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.<br /><br />
+<small>(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For struggling poor sowls like myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To brighten our dreary existence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ even to gather some pelf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a land where the soil is but waitin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from the strings of my life&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the spot where my mother lies buried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The place where I coorted my wife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My conscience remorsefully pricks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When my luck like a stranger goes by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When blight settles down on the praties,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I curse you, misfortune so cruel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And often at night I’ve a notion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that plintiful land o’er the ocean<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They might even an odd pat of butther<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Along with their stirabout mix;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, my heart is too full for to utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To see the health-roses assimble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the innocent laugh of my girls;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="JENKINS_M_P" id="JENKINS_M_P"></a>JENKINS, M. P.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To address the electors he’d soothered before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he found in their feelings toward him a change,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as it was freezing it needn’t be told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THADY_MALONE" id="THADY_MALONE"></a>THADY MALONE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH for our tight little, bright little nation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Were once we united<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Our wrongs should be righted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But still some intraygur,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Or bastely renayger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Yet, no matter, we’ve planned<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A divarsion so grand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And the rogue who’ll consent<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">To contribute rack rint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">For his wife wint away<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">On the very next day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ sisters and cousins<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Departed in dozens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Why, sorra a doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Sure, the fire it wint out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Till he felt that the rint<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Had been badly ill-spint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The sparrows, diminted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Grew quite discontinted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The pigs tuk to fittin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ hins that were sittin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A polis inspector,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A taxes collector,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ there now he’s stuck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Without hope, grace, or luck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> <a name="RORYS_REVERIE" id="RORYS_REVERIE"></a>RORY’S REVERIE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ they must know&mdash;the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging hotly round),&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She kissed me ere she sank to rest&mdash;I’d think it sin just now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I mustn’t think of this&mdash;No! no! for Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My child&mdash;but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m shakin’ like an aspen&mdash;Faugh! I can’t afford to spend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE" id="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE"></a>A DOUBLE SURPRISE.</h2>
+
+<h3>I.<br /><br />
+GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">C</span>ONSTABLE Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the
+Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail
+to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable
+Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was
+tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,
+and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution
+which has deprived the Irish constabulary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span> of all the ordinary feelings
+of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a
+riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a
+recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was
+born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was
+evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in
+dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested
+suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar
+to his code of instructions and mode of training&mdash;these were mysteries
+known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The
+physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own
+limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry
+McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the
+metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the
+somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in
+the parish who disputed unpopularity with him&mdash;George Macgrabb, J. P.,
+the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of
+its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles
+around.</p>
+
+<p>Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two
+despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral&mdash;or
+immoral&mdash;characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the
+recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to
+the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,
+that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span> chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question
+about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,
+which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to
+direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were
+supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save
+Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police
+were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the
+constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.
+Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his
+magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest
+in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he
+had sent to Gallagher a goose.</p>
+
+<p>“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate
+feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to
+rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.
+Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your
+comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and
+miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,
+or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the
+gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship
+are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried
+to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of
+a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span> half-a-dozen
+agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make
+his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But
+the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The
+compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin <i>Farmer’s Gazette</i> recommended
+boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his
+own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged
+Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.
+The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he
+could recover from this outrage to his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the <i>Barndoor
+Chronicle</i> gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert
+Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of
+edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight
+spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.
+He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the
+kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in
+Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and
+culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be
+fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,
+half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official <i>Gazette</i>, tunic
+buttons, bayonet sheaths&mdash;anything, everything, except flesh-forming
+food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private
+circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,
+search-warrants, copies of infor<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span>mation, it swallowed with an avidity
+that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a
+knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that
+wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be
+necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that
+transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.</p>
+
+<h3>II.<br /><br />
+A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.</h3>
+
+<p>The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable
+Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.
+They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,
+and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant
+farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated
+Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,
+madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never
+doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and
+propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British
+justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary
+joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and
+your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who
+is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great
+measure to his powers of mimicry, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span> the fact that Macgrabb and
+Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At
+weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again
+and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the
+magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the
+greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried
+in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would
+have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s
+charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at
+finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue
+and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s
+father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the
+parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either
+the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the
+sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not
+account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a
+two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and
+in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb
+could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s
+Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less
+expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,
+guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to
+contribute, but he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span> could and did express his opinion of the
+rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis
+was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of
+the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within
+measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s
+collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had
+begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the
+universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left
+McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his
+difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered
+the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This
+reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.
+Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,
+frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the
+opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of
+his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in
+his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the
+fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a
+devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he
+couldn’t quite understand it himself.</p>
+
+<p>It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly
+disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical
+susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span>
+Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and
+with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a
+knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical
+studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a
+grass plot, and out into the high road.</p>
+
+<p>It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose
+of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the
+peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand
+familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper
+escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch
+McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been
+engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents
+are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and
+you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents&mdash;you’re not
+supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t
+nab that rent receipt&mdash;you’ll know it&mdash;it’s on blue, thick paper&mdash;what
+harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police
+authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing
+else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down
+for you, and the chance, Tom&mdash;think of that, my<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span> boy&mdash;the chance of
+having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood
+out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party
+last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you
+think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,
+gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till
+the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with
+delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers
+and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a
+rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies
+of the <i>Irish World</i>, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,
+even if I lose my stripes.”</p>
+
+<p>On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a
+loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the
+summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and
+Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.</p>
+
+<p>“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he
+yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my
+oath&mdash;I mane this sarch-warrant&mdash;I demand any arms, ammunition,
+traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”</p>
+
+<p>McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to
+his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,
+“Arrah! Ser<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span>geant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of
+these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,
+yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have
+such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”</p>
+
+<p>The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his
+followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or
+scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,
+and the merciless jeering of the young student.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.
+If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there
+is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”</p>
+
+<p>That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat
+down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the
+search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged
+in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the
+table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring
+in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened
+by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and
+perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was
+the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the
+omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers
+strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,
+but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and
+disappeared from view.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>III.<br /><br />
+A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.</h3>
+
+<p>About noon the constable received the following note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your
+grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for
+£24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George
+Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take
+legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your
+punishment. Yours, etc., <span class="smcap">Patrick McCarthy</span>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">
+<span class="smcap">Mr. McCarthy</span>:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to
+the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few
+suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Yours, <span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>Constable, R. I. C.</i><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The second note was less short, but more mysterious:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">
+<span class="smcap">Mr. Macgrabb</span>:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Respected Sir</i>,&mdash;That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying
+out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.
+Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has
+one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its
+stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it wo<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span>n’t digest a
+piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill
+the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>.<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives
+from Macgrabb:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">The Lodge</span>, Dec. 7, 1880.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>My dear Mr. McCarthy</i>,&mdash;I find on looking over the office books
+that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.
+His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his
+father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,
+and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I
+would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of
+course you know the consequences of delay.</p>
+
+<p class="c">Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">George Macgrabb</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Dear Constable</i>,&mdash;Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to
+drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">George.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<h3>IV.<br /><br />
+THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.</h3>
+
+<p>To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his
+note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its
+literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,
+for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more
+for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat
+annoyed, even if it did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span> alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was
+a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have
+killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost
+receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive
+interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the
+missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated
+blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document
+obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to
+breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the
+barracks of its treasure.</p>
+
+<p>On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the
+fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after
+Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent
+to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment
+against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the
+said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why
+such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious
+tenant.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.</p>
+
+<p>“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day
+or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from
+McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was
+stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the
+<i>Irish World</i> found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the
+bench against<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span> him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We
+landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G&mdash;d, I’ll
+put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll
+be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have
+every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other
+rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them
+down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more
+men.”</p>
+
+<p>“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a
+vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,
+didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains
+of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a
+fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save
+young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?
+He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then
+look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.
+Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating
+and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a
+hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the
+hamper was attached a card:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“A Christmas Box&mdash;From Harry McCarthy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,
+with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from
+the box a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span> “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher
+and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the
+goose!”</p>
+
+<p>They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,
+as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as
+ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the
+law.</p>
+
+<p>The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time
+before he could read its contents:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>My poor Gallagher</i>,&mdash;I do not wish to deprive you of your
+Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
+collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
+last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
+has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
+exploring turn of mind that I admire&mdash;though certainly it is the
+most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
+confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
+well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
+employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
+digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
+and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
+to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
+discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
+valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
+has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
+blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
+hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
+better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
+your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
+discovery<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
+mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
+treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
+which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
+time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
+exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
+interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
+author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
+in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
+ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
+strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
+would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
+dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
+both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Yours, as ever,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<span class="smcap">Harry McCarthy</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>P. S.&mdash;I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
+which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
+you tickets?</p></div>
+
+<p>They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after
+they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply
+for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the
+whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the
+greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot
+say which was the greater surprise&mdash;that which he felt when he
+encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he
+got it back again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE" id="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE"></a>OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>RIGHTLY our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Firm is each footstep, erect every head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wakens the nation&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On to the contest, then, up with the green again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death to the tyrant&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But now she rises erect from her knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">England no longer can mock or deride us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">True to the cause we shall ever remain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Soldiers, press onward&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="PHILIPSONS_PARTY" id="PHILIPSONS_PARTY"></a>PHILIPSON’S PARTY.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">P</span>ETER PHILIPSON, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson
+Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived
+in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the
+express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,
+which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out
+of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had
+allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three
+years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle
+manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease&mdash;with a
+view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all
+round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to
+view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was
+regarded by Old Soapsuds,&mdash;which was the very irreverend title those
+benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the
+city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime
+of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span> the
+tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table
+had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest
+bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson
+had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it
+would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no
+effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and
+calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict
+Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest
+of the tenants.</p>
+
+<p>At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going
+agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,
+ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of
+landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the
+entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put
+down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was
+smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of
+any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally
+workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked
+fifty&mdash;fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to
+beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was
+what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had
+Peter Philipson&mdash;“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.</p>
+
+<p>The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained
+the old housekeeper and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span> cook and the coachman and a stable boy,
+only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas
+Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the
+evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of
+the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first
+proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the
+neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his
+next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as
+a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he
+expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the
+recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.
+These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate
+missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,
+including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under
+penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon
+his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his
+father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle
+to the <i>Limehouse Chronicle</i> on the proper method of settling the Irish
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his
+tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay
+up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected
+so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the
+farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span>
+who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them
+retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say
+that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be
+a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,
+and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,
+he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got
+round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest
+without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an
+ill-disguised sneer.</p>
+
+<p>Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the
+wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the
+twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.</p>
+
+<p>“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we’re here to bring <i>you</i> to <i>your</i> senses; not to show that
+we’ve parted with our own.”</p>
+
+<p>“I&mdash;I&mdash;” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t
+understand you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for
+arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to
+raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long
+as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint
+too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span> to offer you a fair rint for
+this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t
+like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to
+the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”</p>
+
+<p>Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was
+nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he
+did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is
+mo&mdash;mo&mdash;monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in
+every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll
+evict&mdash;I’ll-I’ll&mdash;by Jove! I’ll&mdash;I’ll&mdash;Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of
+this!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like
+to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve
+only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,
+begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man
+to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,
+thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.
+Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts
+of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own
+fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t
+neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word
+of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A
+thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the
+deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest
+chair with a dim conviction surging through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span> his brain that there was
+something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,
+Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than
+Ballymurphy, County Cork.</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things
+were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the
+decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about
+that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so
+how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with
+him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived
+spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was
+interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man
+Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which
+at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.</p>
+
+<p>“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.</p>
+
+<p>“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,
+she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the
+’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the
+front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe
+there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,
+’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’
+mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a
+hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with
+the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span>
+come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey&mdash;I mean
+to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham&mdash;I
+didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as
+much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for
+Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of
+hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful
+Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed
+sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest
+railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the
+distance he could place before nightfall between himself and
+Ballymurphy.</p>
+
+<p>A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had
+spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires
+were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision
+store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig
+he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his
+equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter
+groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited
+guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.
+Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring
+squires from half a dozen estates&mdash;a goodly company of fifteen or
+sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their
+wants,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span> and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple
+of loaves to feast their appetites!</p>
+
+<p>It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the
+burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman
+in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the
+whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial
+in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking
+examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he
+would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?
+Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing
+his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where
+boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and
+housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he
+poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.
+With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove
+the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to
+his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He
+restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the
+stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The
+party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it
+was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.</p>
+
+<p>If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a
+soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span> the counting-house of
+Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his
+candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned
+to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be
+firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on
+the subject.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>ILL up once more, we’ll drink a toast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To comrades far away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nation on the earth can boast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of braver hearts than they.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though they sleep in dungeons deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or flee, outlawed and banned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We love them yet, we ne’er forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Foredoomed by alien laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some on the scaffold proudly died<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For holy Ireland’s cause.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brothers, say, shall we to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unmoved like cowards stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While traitors shame and foes defame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some in the convict’s dreary cell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have found a living tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And some unseen, unfriended, fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within its silent gloom.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet what care we, although it be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Trod by a ruffian band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless the clay where rest to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, little do we care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An Irish head can wear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every Gael in Innisfail<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Lee to Boyne would gladly join<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION" id="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION"></a>AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as he contemplated the interminable rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As he thought of bronchial attacks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His gloomy face relaxed,&mdash;indeed, he actually laughed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He whispered to the jarvey&mdash;“You remember Murphy’s land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is, could you perambulate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around that gentleman’s estate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Return the muddy boots to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unbrushed, because I wish to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He simply mopped the boots around<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dirtiest adjacent ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER" id="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER"></a>A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>’M diminted,&mdash;this is awful; so it is<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The time I lost my churning through the thunder.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wouldn’t mind the ould man,&mdash;not a jot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I always looked upon him as a blaggard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since his language was so disperately hot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They might pass their resolutions by the score<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">About him, and I would niver prove contrary,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would do my best endayvors to obey;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION" id="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION"></a>A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span> PEGGY, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And help me to recover from my state of discontint;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By the light of that same silver moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Found out of his bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But will straightway be led<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">To a cushion of plank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That of feathers is blank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For resting his arm round your waist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">An’ except for a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or a glance of your eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or an odd little squeeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That there’s nobody sees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">His comfort will be of the laste.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I despised my five miles of a thramp<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8">For I knew at its ind<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">I could always dipind<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That some one I’d find<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Who had sootherings kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To rescue my sperits from damp.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Stritched out on an ould cabin door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">With six ounces of lead<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Settled inside my head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">An’ my bosom, that’s true<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">As the saints unto you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Disarranged by an ounce or two more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the law has such far-seeing eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">’Twould find thim all out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And there isn’t a doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Introduced I would be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">By some dirty J. P.,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To a suit of the Government frieze.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ONEILLS_ADDRESS" id="ONEILLS_ADDRESS"></a>O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.<br /><br />
+<small>BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>ALLANT sons of Innisfail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye whose stout hearts never quail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though no glittering coats of mail<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Their proud throbbings hide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! yon distant sullen hum!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis the rolling of the drum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See! our Saxon foemen come<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">In their wrath and pride.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Meet them, comrades, face to face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet them as becomes our race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let no shadow of disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Dim our spotless name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Front to front, unshrinking, stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fire each heart and nerve each hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike for God and fatherland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Liberty and fame!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kinsmen, they are still the same<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when, centuries past, they came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To our shores, and blood and flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Followed in their track;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the still uncancelled debt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We were cowards to forget,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wrongs we suffer yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Drive them headlong back!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As when angry billows leap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like proud chargers from the deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">All their wrath to spray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So their glinting waves of steel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till their serried columns reel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Scattered in dismay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still unconquered, proud, and free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike, and fear not,&mdash;victory<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Waits on every blow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike, that we may never roam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike together, and strike home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Vengeance on the foe!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FENIANS_DREAM" id="THE_FENIANS_DREAM"></a>THE FENIAN’S DREAM.<br /><br />
+<small>CHRISTMAS, 1867.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HROUGH London’s dull and murky air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The merry Christmas bells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their sonorous throbs and swells.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the half-slumbering town they spoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of peace and God’s good-will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seemed to chase with pealing stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fiends of hate and ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, ah, how cruelly they broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around dark Pentonville!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half timid, forced their way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fell in slender, silvery streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down where the convict lay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They glanced a moment round the place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cold, comfortless, and bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, in a pitying embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like angel spirits there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caressed the careworn, pallid face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So wan, and yet so fair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They seemed to whisper softly while<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around his head they strayed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half joy, half anguish, played;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if the tender moonbeams sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bright tales of hope to tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the day memories, bitter, wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such fancies to dispel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so his two dream guardians fought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within his lonely cell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His dream was of the loved old land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He never could forget&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had not subdued it yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land of legend and of lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of mountain, stream, and lake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of forest, glen, and brake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where highland sprite and lowland fay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A home forever make.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The land whose children toil and bleed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And drudge and starve in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For where the peasant sows the seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A stranger reaps the grain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Isle of Saints&mdash;where knaves and spies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flourish and thrive apace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where fortune must be wooed by lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dishonor, and disgrace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The true man from such saintdom flies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And cattle take his place.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Land of the green, and of the gray!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For workhouse, tomb, and jail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And answer, Innisfail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell us which tint thou seest most,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The old one or the new?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The green of which our poets boast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the more sombre hue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Few wear the green: a countless host<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have donned the gray for you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Island of verdure, glorious land!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So rich in fertile plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet famine ever reigns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where through the mellow ripening corn<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The balmiest zephyrs sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where brighter seems each glowing morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More radiant each sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where ’tis misfortune to be born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And happiness to die.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To think he played once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beside the cabin door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon his mother’s knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He first had learned to lisp a prayer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For Ireland’s liberty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ever pregnant seemed the air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With joyous melody.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His fancy changed: the youthful face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sternness now was set,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His woes had left no coward trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon his spirit yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His cheeks were all aglow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Expanded seemed the hollow chest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His brows contract, as though<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disturbed and broken was his rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By some nocturnal foe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreamt that in his native land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from this bleak jail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He stood within a meadow grand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A shamrock-spangled vale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above the scene the sun-rays bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In glittering grandeur beamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around him in their golden light<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ten thousand bayonets beamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Green Erin’s banner streamed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From town and village, hill and glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With clamorous fife and drum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From mountain brake and lowland fen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mustering legions come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has brought his dinted blade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While quickly from the neighboring town<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flock in the sons of trade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The farmer flings his good spade down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And joins the dense brigade.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fiery Northmen, in whose veins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still flows the blood of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who on a hundred battle-plains<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have conquered Erin’s foes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The brave descendants of O’Neill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A stern and fearless band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A living wall of sparkling steel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beneath the old flag stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a Saxon foe shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With Ulster’s columns, side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are Munster’s squadrons massed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like tigers into line they glide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So noiselessly and fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They bear into the fray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through England’s host their sabres keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall carve a corse-strewn way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Limerick and Skibbereen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be well avenged to-day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Proud Leinster, all your chivalry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To arms electric spring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High ’mid the battle’s revelry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your stirring shout shall ring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a foe this day shall rue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your fierce, impetuous might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The scenes that gallant Wexford knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall be reversed ere night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The epitaph to Emmet due<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your gleaming swords shall write.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within your ranks this hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the strength your hatred gives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Well may the despot cower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think of your long, black night of tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And say, can you forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That huge, uncancelled debt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wrongs of thrice two hundred years<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That scourge your province yet?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark to that distant rumbling sound!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See, yonder come the foe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now be our arms with victory crowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The foreign scum laid low.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stillness and the calm are o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And many a sulphurous cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betinged with flame and dripping gore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall form a battle-shroud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For those whose tongues may swell no more<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The nation’s slogan loud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like hostile torrents armies clash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And steel now crosses steel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lurid flames incessant flash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And volleyed thunders peal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But backward reel the alien ranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With one exultant cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not vainly will ye die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The craven red-coats fly!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And though yon darling flag<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May float above our castle towers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A torn and tattered rag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis still our own; and every fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Preserved us from the strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each shred around that flag-staff rolled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unpierced by ball or knife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is worth a mine of virgin gold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Aye, worth a hero’s life.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From slimy cell and dungeon damp<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bring forth our prisoned men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gather, ye braves, from every camp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To cheer them home again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though to-day they did not bleed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To share our victory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We reap the harvest of their seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So victors still they be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From faction they our people freed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And now our land is free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span>
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The city with your strain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your loudest music cannot break<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felon’s rest again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor left a single ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all that but this moment shone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Retreat before the day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that last, loving, pitying one<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has borne his soul away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Died in his cell”&mdash;and nothing more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas all his comrades heard;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of the dream he had before<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He died,&mdash;oh, not a word!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They found him on the coarse straw bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A smile upon his face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, “Number 28 found dead,”<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was whispered round the place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the jail doctor shook his head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And wondered at the case!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT" id="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT"></a>THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>N earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is not much fun in recovering rent<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the Land League has hold of the people;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But upheaval of earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Is good reason for mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Compared to a seat<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Where the Commoners meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Catarrhic attacks are not charming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Should close diagnosis<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Reveal your probocis<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To be of your weakness recorder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You might foolishly curse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But it’s very much worse<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are music compared to the agonized yell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of rage and derision, his greeting;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You go home to your bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">With a pain in your head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your sleep is a blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your comfort takes flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your breathing is tight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You scratch and you bite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or you wake with affright<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">As you dream through the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That Mulligan rises to order!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ERIN_MACHREE_1798" id="ERIN_MACHREE_1798"></a>ERIN MACHREE (1798).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE sun had gone down in a halo of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We gathered together in sorrow and weeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That morning must dawn on our island at last.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS" id="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS"></a>THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>HEN Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years
+ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret
+conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he
+decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and
+Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly
+attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently
+to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the
+combined detective forces.</p>
+
+<p>Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff
+of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua
+Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to
+Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his
+impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is
+fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span>
+aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,&mdash;intensely
+jealous&mdash;the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy&mdash;a Mount
+Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,
+cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.</p>
+
+<p>She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional
+nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all
+the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a
+renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his
+constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,
+in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in
+petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix
+surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his
+coat-collar as a sort of <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> to repel illegal embraces.
+Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the
+postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was
+quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to
+witness the pair&mdash;he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the
+other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a
+miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging
+promiscuously about her&mdash;careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase
+to that winning post, the door.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of
+night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst
+out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span>
+snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the
+amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would
+remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of
+slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of
+feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.</p>
+
+<p>Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra
+professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,
+but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or
+other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of
+civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed
+on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any
+postal manual.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not
+phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad
+fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our
+rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.
+London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and
+cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to
+Love’s young dream in the entire A division.</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids
+either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and
+there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a
+maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted
+brother. He was madly smitten by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span> new object of adoration about every
+five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a
+week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a
+school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or
+so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular
+as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed
+around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of
+sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If
+accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and
+forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen
+cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four
+washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.</p>
+
+<p>His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent
+intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley
+Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of
+promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare
+not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet
+day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big
+brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted
+to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular
+London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all
+these horrors which a trip to Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span> afforded him. But, alas! he
+brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been
+kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not
+been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful
+affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,
+Burns &amp; Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices&mdash;“Original price, 2
+guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”</p>
+
+<p>The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer
+in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the
+elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the
+confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their
+secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the
+pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It
+was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,
+but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see
+her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill
+under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest
+observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”
+he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold
+forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,
+mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight
+effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span>
+water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens
+reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up
+alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a
+disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and
+electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a
+stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred
+spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,
+of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare
+the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,
+and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with
+me to sunnier climes?&mdash;we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or
+Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest
+Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or
+whatever thy sweet name may be&mdash;behold me at thy feet!”</p>
+
+<p>And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the
+bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of
+which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of
+plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool
+shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman
+was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at
+robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in
+the shape of tears.</p>
+
+<p>The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span> tender-hearted
+Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the
+most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t
+tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish
+colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a
+charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought
+it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’
+figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which
+shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit
+those wonderfully informed London journals, the <i>Standard</i> and <i>Daily
+Telegraph</i>, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping
+vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to
+remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins
+himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of
+his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at
+least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric
+light.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="BALFOURS_WISH" id="BALFOURS_WISH"></a>BALFOUR’S WISH.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN members have taken their usual places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as, one by one, question follows on question,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In agony mental that spoils his digestion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“The average size of potatoes in Clare?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A third seeks a legal opinion, without<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Does he ever indulge in the national car?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_CAUSE" id="OUR_CAUSE"></a>OUR CAUSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>EVEN hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT" id="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT"></a>SERVED HIM RIGHT.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the
+Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat
+right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor
+creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”&mdash;<i>London
+Graphic.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE no tears for brother Pat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the Egyptian desert, that<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He might assist in England’s glory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The foes he fought were not his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then why should I his fate bemoan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O brother, faithless and degraded!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He saw how Saxon laws at home<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should he cross the ocean’s foam<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To place that hated yoke on others?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Arabs slew him in a fight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For all by brave and free men cherished&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, for the cause of truth and right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For which his kith and kin had perished.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No Arab chief in Ninety-eight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They lent no spears to swell the hate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But those who wrapt our homes in flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was for them&mdash;oh, burning shame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My brother gave his life in battle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sure, every memory of late<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Must from his wretched heart have vanished;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hills and valleys desolate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our ruined homes, our people banished.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, God knows, he learned in youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The gloomy story of his sireland&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drank in at mother’s knees the truth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That England is the scourge of Ireland.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cannot weep for brother Pat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I hate the hellish cause he died for;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">False traitor to the freedom that<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E’en when in tearful dreams I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My grief is changed to anger. He<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was treacherous to the land that bore him!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="RAPPAREE_SONG" id="RAPPAREE_SONG"></a>RAPPAREE SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re traitors because we are true to our land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have hunted us down now for many a day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND" id="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND"></a>TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">Y</span>OU tendered us when famine came<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pity of a thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hearts and souls you’d bought.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time’s wheel turns round&mdash;you’ve lost your place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And right into your tyrant face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Your jibes and sneers<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Of many years<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">At victims’ tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Are thrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And in God’s name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Our hearts aflame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">To-day we claim<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Muscle and brain we wrought.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Toiled, starved, and died&mdash;scarce for ourselves<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The crumbs of Lazarus sought;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when ye flung us out a crust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our faces grovelling in the dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">We gave ye thanks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">No prize, all blanks<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">In our poor ranks<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Was known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But now, thank God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">We’ve spurned your rod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And claim this sod<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We lift our faces to the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where once our heads were bowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We breathe no more a timid sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But speak our thoughts aloud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From dizzy hill and peaceful plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our voices join in this refrain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The seeds we sow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The crops we grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The fields we mow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Without your aid<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">In cash or spade<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">At last are made<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="BALFOUR_REJOICES" id="BALFOUR_REJOICES"></a>BALFOUR REJOICES.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O the toil of the session is over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My woes for a period cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hey for a journey by Dover<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To latitudes promising peace;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away to recuperate vigor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from obstruction’s mad spell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away from the questions of Biggar&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from the taunts of Parnell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more my poor head shall be aching<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With night after night of debate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more shall my soul feel a quaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At bald, irrepressible prate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, though ocean attack me with rigor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And getting away from Parnell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more to be quizzed on each capture<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of priest or of peasant by night&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could dance the can-can in my rapture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or stand on my head with delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or like a wild Irishman yell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And don’t give&mdash;ahem&mdash;for Parnell!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet I feel an occasional spasm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At thoughts of returning at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twere better to leap down a chasm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or under an avalanche fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, fingers embracing the trigger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let the pistol’s report loudly tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How I hated the queries of Biggar<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the dolorous talk of Parnell.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER" id="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER"></a>A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that
+powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville <i>Sparrow</i>, is a
+sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be
+the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville
+<i>Sparrow</i> (<i>vide</i> its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in
+the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of
+Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and
+creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so
+tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the
+times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the
+Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York
+<i>Herald</i> and <i>Tribune</i> and <i>Times</i> and the Boston <i>Herald</i> and a score
+of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the
+<i>Sparrow</i> felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by
+following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,
+advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold
+himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial
+back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He
+was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old
+copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the
+landed gentry of the country.</p>
+
+<p>His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span> ground. “You
+know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were
+there. We’ve got to lick the New York <i>Herald</i> and the rest of ’em.
+Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.
+There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious
+management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d
+better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do
+to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might
+skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and
+give us some lively telegrams.”</p>
+
+<p>Well, it <i>was</i> lively for a few weeks after that in the <i>Sparrow</i>. One
+day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland&mdash;Seven Landlords Shot!” The next
+there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara&mdash;Six Agents
+Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the <i>Tribune</i> came out
+with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there
+had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and
+seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious
+reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,
+and who didn’t grasp the fact that the <i>Tribune’s</i> was a three-months’
+record, paralyzed the readers of the <i>Sparrow</i> with a blood-curdling
+telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in
+the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in
+their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having
+suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and
+processes on the half-shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146">{146}</a></span> to being stripped naked and turned loose
+for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time
+the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names
+eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to
+improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of
+variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred
+land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should
+diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Galway</span>, Tuesday.&mdash;A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from
+which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon
+yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he
+weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have
+been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new
+veins yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan
+boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she
+can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She
+wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the
+editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,
+according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers
+began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen
+murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of
+errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as
+well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the
+chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147">{147}</a></span> bar next door.
+“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.
+Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,
+and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy
+for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the
+<i>Sparrow</i>, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish
+correspondent:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose
+energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a
+position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.
+As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,
+and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who
+for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his
+repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in &mdash;&mdash;. But to
+abbreviate.</p>
+
+<p>“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose
+brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible
+marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,
+whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin
+elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature
+had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy
+proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we
+asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of
+being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness
+will corroborate<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148">{148}</a></span> my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was
+down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought
+me into Ballykill&mdash;something or somebody. I never witnessed anything
+like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They
+were worn to threads.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make
+a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could
+produce anything like a respectable shade.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of
+the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to
+bark at me&mdash;just collapsed like a house of cards.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He
+felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion
+warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and
+succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary
+instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow
+you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I gave the man a shilling for him&mdash;in two sixpences, so that he could
+balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side
+pocket, it would have brought him down.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s
+centre of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149">{149}</a></span> dining-room, but,
+fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.
+In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom
+of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He
+couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.
+He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his
+feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position
+when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect
+his tail.’</p>
+
+<p>“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double
+knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much
+so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot
+out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a
+moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the
+Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails
+in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had
+a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’
+concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of
+a knot on a dog’s tail!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE" id="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE"></a>THE IRISH BRIGADE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150">{150}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They loved the green island, and died where they fought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May we fight the battle of freedom as well<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151">{151}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SNOOKS" id="SNOOKS"></a>SNOOKS.</h2>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="letra">J</span>USTICE in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the
+law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high
+priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist
+temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about
+one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British
+honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only
+pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very
+corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends
+to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should
+be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,
+he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable
+record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative
+to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of
+the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There
+is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.
+When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he
+holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks
+[<i>laughter</i>] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by
+Snooks.’ [<i>Laughter.</i>]”</p></div>
+
+<p>Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect
+that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of
+the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152">{152}</a></span>
+deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest
+admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to
+that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you notice a policeman at the corner of a street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And confusion quite apparent in his looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which his dignity but very little brooks.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS" id="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS"></a>CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>OWARDS the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of
+whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into
+one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her
+like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153">{153}</a></span> pranks of Fenianism
+first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had
+just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel
+leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty
+conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was
+felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been
+foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at
+Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and
+hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and
+provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful
+conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had
+been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky
+Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The
+volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and
+eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible
+confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their
+presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,
+while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like
+Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were
+seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s
+residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with
+nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express
+for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the
+suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of
+engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the
+defunct<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154">{154}</a></span> tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in
+England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they
+were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed
+to the depths of the silent waters.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm
+existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was
+augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county
+constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest
+surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public
+buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags
+of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the
+sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like
+Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,
+and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent
+of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he
+ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.
+Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian
+bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon
+the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in
+garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer
+when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing
+the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the
+troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the
+ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the
+barracks attacked<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155">{155}</a></span> by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,
+bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,
+sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into
+as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.</p>
+
+<p>Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of
+Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without
+knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the
+Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,
+and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of
+Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,
+and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.
+Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and
+tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the
+entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow
+candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as
+to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an
+Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they
+were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold
+the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander
+carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the
+candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or
+was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege
+last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of
+the candle<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156">{156}</a></span> idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a
+doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when
+at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to
+find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and
+would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions
+of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm
+tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that
+battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as
+the Caledonian Candlesticks.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST" id="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST"></a>FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157">{157}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158">{158}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG" id="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG"></a>FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH! we stand on Irish land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our hated foe before us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And once for all, to rise or fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The green flag flying o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve raised it proudly overhead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God prosper our endeavor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To keep it there forever!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We marched away at break of day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sweethearts left behind us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To strike one blow at yon false foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose rusty fetters bind us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For while we bear the name of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, Ireland shall be free again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’ve listened long to traitors mean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">False England’s scarlet praising;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve heard them mock our Irish green<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Until our blood seemed blazing!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chieftains, too, who should be true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have kept our ranks asunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In Freedom’s battle-thunder!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No matter who may lead ’em,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here’s a curse on every slave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who mars the cause of freedom!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159">{159}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let leaders vain aside remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Until their feuds are ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis by the man who knows no clan<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag must be defended.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Limerick’s walls to Derry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold ramblers from the County Clare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mountaineers from Kerry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll chase our alien foes away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll tear our bonds asunder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We care not who’s to lead to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>We’ll</i> fight and conquer under!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS" id="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS"></a>THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>AR away from the home and the friends they love best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160">{160}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When they took them away from that desolate place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They found death had left a bright smile on each face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="DEATHS_VICTORY" id="DEATHS_VICTORY"></a>DEATH’S VICTORY.<br /><br />
+<small>IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But with these ’tis not death&mdash;for through every age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the stories they tell, the examples they give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Genius and Truth&mdash;he will live! he will live!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_161" id="page_161">{161}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG" id="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG"></a>THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>EAR it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On, on, through the smoke and the glare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We will plant it triumphantly there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas lost at the base of the hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sunshine and shower, side by side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_162" id="page_162">{162}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our foes even then shall behold that above us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The flag that our children shall bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see in the land of their love and devotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag wave triumphantly still.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">from North,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_163" id="page_163">{163}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY" id="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY"></a>HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>ROUSE ye from your slumbering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Awake to life once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The time for idle pleadings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And for vain regrets is o’er;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But in a fight like men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll win our own again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Till death we stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To make our land<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A nation proud and free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_164" id="page_164">{164}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We bent unto the tyrant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we prayed in vain for years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now we’re going to try, boys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rifle-balls instead of tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The rolling of the drum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in future our petitions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the cannon’s mouth shall come.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Galway right to Wicklow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from Cork to Donegal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll march once more for liberty<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To win it or to fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And guard it with our steel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll show our foes what deadly blows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each Irish arm can deal.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In ages past the redcoats quailed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Before our fathers’ might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have we not still the courage left<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To battle for the right?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though cowards dread the troops in red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll cross their steel with joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And show that Irish valor was<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not spent at Fontenoy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wily knave, the coward slave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To home and life may cling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there’s no place for falsehood’s face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where gleaming sabres ring!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_165" id="page_165">{165}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For Freedom and for Right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our last appeal is fight!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MESSENGER" id="THE_MESSENGER"></a>THE MESSENGER.<br /><br />
+<small>NOVEMBER 23, 1867.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>ITH bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We questioned him with eager eyes&mdash;we had not power to speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_166" id="page_166">{166}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_167" id="page_167">{167}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such a death&mdash;the felon’s death&mdash;the death that villains die&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And, last of all, the father,<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> who that day would leave behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wonder if he faltered&mdash;’twas, oh God! a fearful test;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_168" id="page_168">{168}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And these are murderers, they say&mdash;are cowards, base and vile:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL" id="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL"></a>A TYPICAL TRIAL.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">J</span>OSEPH O’GRABALL, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in
+the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace
+and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid
+offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I
+shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real
+cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably
+one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional
+magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found
+temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed
+into law.</p>
+
+<p>Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality
+decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,
+but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to
+nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing
+faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest
+provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can
+tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_169" id="page_169">{169}</a></span> an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of
+his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side
+with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every
+individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He
+is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and
+arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a
+mustache.</p>
+
+<p>Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life
+lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a
+simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is
+little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless
+there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting
+this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no
+leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But
+the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to
+arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,
+unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to
+his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?
+Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A
+goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about
+Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might
+have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in
+enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_170" id="page_170">{170}</a></span> April night a
+sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,
+and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,
+they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty
+nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the
+indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,
+which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.</p>
+
+<p>“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,
+and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to
+destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious
+Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of
+England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and
+the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.</p>
+
+<p>“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset
+or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the
+ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”</p>
+
+<p>“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”</p>
+
+<p>“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before
+my men. Come along.”</p>
+
+<p>Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_171" id="page_171">{171}</a></span> utterly amazed and
+confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,
+where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into
+the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones
+what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality
+a rich burlesque:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Prisoner, what is your name?”</p>
+
+<p>“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”</p>
+
+<p>“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have
+been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of
+such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a
+note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is
+correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”</p>
+
+<p>“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male
+gender?”</p>
+
+<p>“He wore breeches, anyhow.”</p>
+
+<p>“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,
+make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the
+customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case
+is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,
+prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your honor.”</p>
+
+<p>“And this hammer?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your lordship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_172" id="page_172">{172}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“And these nails?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and
+this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and
+revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your
+diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how
+far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of
+your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do
+you say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood
+with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens
+be his bed; and the nails&mdash;the nails&mdash;the troth, I don’t know what I
+wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the
+sarjent.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.
+The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police
+barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand
+grenades.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but
+he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient
+magistrate proceeded:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_173" id="page_173">{173}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter&mdash;a very
+important letter&mdash;from New York. Where did you discover that?”</p>
+
+<p>“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream
+of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,
+prisoner, what is this drawing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was
+thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so
+proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with
+the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,
+with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that
+the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through
+that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”</p>
+
+<p>“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat
+should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking
+you are.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter
+is dated New York&mdash;the most treasonable locality on the face of the
+earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother&mdash;(of course you’re all brothers.
+Sergeant, make a note of that)&mdash;I write these few lines hoping they will
+find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.
+(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I
+cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_174" id="page_174">{174}</a></span> discern it just now.) I met the ould man&mdash;(Rossa, I suppose.
+Make a note, sergeant)&mdash;on landing. He would advise you not to kill the
+ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old&mdash;oh! horrible! I see it all. They have
+actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You
+might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,
+to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the
+rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means&mdash;they begin with the
+same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he
+mean by that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Um&mdash;um&mdash;yourself, I think, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel
+would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the
+overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed
+further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world
+might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such
+desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,
+I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence
+with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the
+highest sentence in my power&mdash;three months’ imprisonment&mdash;and, sergeant,
+just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”</p>
+
+<p>Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither
+himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought
+his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was
+convicted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_175" id="page_175">{175}</a></span> And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of
+the coercion act.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN" id="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN"></a>JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am very, very sorry for the <i>Alabama’s</i> pranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And send his best establishments cavorting through the air&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_176" id="page_176">{176}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_177" id="page_177">{177}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB" id="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB"></a>THE STORY OF A BOMB.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE Shannon’s waves with smiling face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A modest cabin stood beside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its gentle perfume-laden tide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunshine of an honest life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A prattling child, a loving wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The joys of home, their blessings shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around the peasant tenant’s head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The twinkling stars of summer skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">His baby’s locks the noonday rays<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Encircled with a golden haze.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But drear December, dark and chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sickness and famine scourged the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in their train the landlord band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And aiding in their mission dire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The liveried hounds in England’s hire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In one brief hour their work was o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A happy home was home no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The wintry skies looked sadly down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Upon the babe that sobbed to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Upon its dying mother’s breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A week&mdash;a month&mdash;he had no power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mark or count each anguished hour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_178" id="page_178">{178}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He knew not if ’twere night or day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When wife and infant passed away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without a hope to dull the pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That numbed his heart and seared his brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Despair behind and gloom before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He left his native Shannon’s shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The ship’s dark side with fond caress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">While chimes from many a distant bell<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With earnest faces fierce and grim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are gathered near a silent swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough toilers from a mining camp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rasping tones of Ulster greet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The voice of Munster soft and sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one and all are Ireland’s friends.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Yet whispering pines that bend above<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Hear words of hatred, not of love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Tears that from eyes of strong men fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Are not of mercy, but of gall.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Each has a sickening tale to tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of England’s robber rule of hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each has a deeply cherished cause<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hate her power and curse her laws.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Then who will venture life, and go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wreak our vengeance on this foe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_179" id="page_179">{179}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he from Shannon answers “I!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The western breezes catch the vow<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">That surges from his bosom now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The exile’s vengeful brand to bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And smite the tiger in his lair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In Babylonian halls to-night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are strains of mirth and flashing light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sheen of satin, gleaming gems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In scores of priceless diadems;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These are the butterflies, the drones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vampires who feed on blood and bones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, cruel parasites, beware,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One victim of your wrong is there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The London skies are black with cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">As by the despot’s citadel<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">A hand from Shannon fires the shell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">England, to thee and thine belongs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The memory of uncounted wrongs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, multiplied through all the years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can turn the wrath thou hast defied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy future sky is overcast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy halcyon days forever past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_180" id="page_180">{180}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM" id="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM"></a>AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>VENGING, though dim, with the dust of inaction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885" id="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885"></a>CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>HRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We should be happy&mdash;for Christmas is here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We have no heart for festivities gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_181" id="page_181">{181}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, dear! what will become of us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Will they blow up every man or but some of us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Give us a rest&mdash;we are pining away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the dread terrors that nightly control<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we may not place a moment’s dependency<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">O Lord! but the immensity<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Splits through the dullest official head’s density,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Turning our locks into premature gray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When it may shortly be scattered around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With scarce a prospect&mdash;oh future precarious!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That a brass button would ever be found?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, dear! is there a river in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Each beating heart that is left above ground?<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_182" id="page_182">{182}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885" id="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885"></a>IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_183" id="page_183">{183}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR" id="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR"></a>JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN BULL looked haggard and drear<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">With fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the bells rang out the old year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">“Oh, dear!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">It’s queer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“With Hans I would like to agree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">For he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is an inch or two taller than me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">You see;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_184" id="page_184">{184}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Mit glee.’<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Is gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At my numerous signs of decay<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Each day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He snaps his fingers right under my nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And has not a pitying word for my woes<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">To say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I once could warn Ivan the bear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Take care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the lion you stir in his lair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Beware!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Out there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But my worst and my ugliest fright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">A sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That keeps me in shivering plight<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">All night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">His might!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_185" id="page_185">{185}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“So for me there’s no Happy New Year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Oh, dear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But doubt, and misgiving, and fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Are here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They cuff me before and they kick me behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in all the world not a friend can I find<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">To cheer!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="READY_AND_STEADY" id="READY_AND_STEADY"></a>READY AND STEADY.<br /><br />
+<small>A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>EADY, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You must decide in the dawning new year.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Comrade or foeman?&mdash;your choice must be made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Neither has room for a neutral brigade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There is no welcome or place for you here;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arms but of you men&mdash;fearless and true men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Strike the last blow in the coming new year.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_186" id="page_186">{186}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Victory marches, but never despair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, be your story sadness or glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED" id="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED"></a>WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>O you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable
+of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly
+busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.</p>
+
+<p>You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the
+landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any
+overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of
+income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad
+luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,
+and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police
+in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered
+on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their
+money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent
+collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been
+easily managed without a peeler at all, but the land<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_187" id="page_187">{187}</a></span>lords wanted bad to
+force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from
+them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in
+and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by
+playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at
+their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting
+fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture
+outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each
+other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date
+lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,
+and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain
+Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they
+were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner
+recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”
+and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special
+correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like
+journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be
+dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,
+blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in
+Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from
+the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible
+state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar
+contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings
+of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole <i>corps d’armee</i> and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_188" id="page_188">{188}</a></span>
+part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs
+and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised
+to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,
+Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that
+head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he
+didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his
+walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly
+have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have
+found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the
+parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,
+in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever
+distilled in these parts&mdash;and that’s a big word. The still was away
+somewhere in the mountains,&mdash;it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into
+geographical details,&mdash;and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger
+between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the
+towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to
+the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,
+and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe
+that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and
+one day some sleeveen&mdash;it was never found out who the stag was&mdash;came
+into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_189" id="page_189">{189}</a></span> Moran had
+guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew
+that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat
+had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and
+as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband
+material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if
+he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of
+dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no
+position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might
+be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes he was <i>en route</i> for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary
+men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did
+find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried
+consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen
+which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,
+and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of
+whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was
+lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,
+awaiting the crisis.</p>
+
+<p>The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The
+search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and
+seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They
+sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem
+examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with
+their bay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_190" id="page_190">{190}</a></span>onets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander
+went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He
+found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back
+with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.</p>
+
+<p>Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung
+to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his
+foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first
+object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and
+poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very
+bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this
+blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck
+on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;
+and now&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the
+house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with
+his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a
+pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He
+would have been left in the cold that day.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran
+fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to
+Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.
+He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_191" id="page_191">{191}</a></span> would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who
+heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp
+of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There
+never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold
+of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,
+eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly
+ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur
+and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept
+upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His
+tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could
+utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him
+how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives
+it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to
+accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a
+[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]
+bad habit.”</p>
+
+<p>“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has
+been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has
+wasted his opportunities.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank
+[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I
+can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, &mdash;&mdash; my eyes!”
+[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_192" id="page_192">{192}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“How the &mdash;&mdash; [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and
+theological disquisitions] can I?”</p>
+
+<p>His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough
+scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of
+an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to
+Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a
+note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two
+three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of
+pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand
+and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he
+wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with
+himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions
+every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife
+that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over
+a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the
+arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had
+parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and
+didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better
+half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he
+offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this
+side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.</p>
+
+<p>His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his
+report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him
+sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_193" id="page_193">{193}</a></span>
+archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The
+reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into
+a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.
+Strange story, ain’t it?</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI" id="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI"></a>THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a><br /><br />
+<small>BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>HASTLY white with affright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down stairs they thundered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peelers and grenadiers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nearly a hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of doors shrieking loud<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rushed the scared hundred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They had no wish to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blown up or sundered.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wildly in flight they sped&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Disgruntled hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bang! went that bombshell near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were they o’ercome with fear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You bet your boots they were&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All of the hundred;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_194" id="page_194">{194}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs not to question why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roof soared aloft to sky&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs but to cut and fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sensible hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Women to right of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women to left of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Children in front of them<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fainted or wondered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they were trained too well&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They knew what meant that shell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So with a gruesome yell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Head over heels, pell-mell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Scattered the hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did they flash sabres bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out on the trembling air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, they just left them there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">There to be plundered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the struggling mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Matron and babe and lass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plunged and strove hard to pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Choking and gasping&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ah, horrified hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Glass smashed to right of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beams flew to left of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walls gaped in front of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Shattered and sundered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All round the citadel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stormed by that awful shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_195" id="page_195">{195}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plaster and brickbats fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down on their heads in storms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, it was worse than hell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out over prostrate forms<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Charged all the hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When shall the record fade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the quick time they made?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All the world wondered.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greyhound or Arab steed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not excel the speed<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of that swift hundred.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES" id="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES"></a>AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_196" id="page_196">{196}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The iron has entered your souls, and forever<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May it brand you as craven and false to your race;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May the years that roll by bring oblivion never<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By coating in slime every link of your chain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The people and ye are no longer the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every heart where one flickering ember<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_197" id="page_197">{197}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER" id="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER"></a>EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">F</span>OR enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to
+“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American
+newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of
+one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,
+if we are to believe his friends.</p>
+
+<p>Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed
+scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event
+on the bandages.</p>
+
+<p>When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange
+demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his
+trombone.</p>
+
+<p>He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_198" id="page_198">{198}</a></span> engraven on blocks of
+ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway
+collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the
+mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after
+the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.</p>
+
+<p>But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few
+years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked
+up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of
+making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage
+soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the
+ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African
+substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for
+luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.</p>
+
+<p>Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to
+take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out
+for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of
+night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded
+its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of
+adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s
+kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.</p>
+
+<p>He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once
+half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and
+toothsome brown; still he had survived.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_199" id="page_199">{199}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable
+adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory
+since Stanley had left.</p>
+
+<p>Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by
+such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero
+in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on
+their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked
+backs.</p>
+
+<p>Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the
+speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an
+escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but
+for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of
+the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED" id="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED"></a>A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">H</span>E was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the
+cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common
+herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations
+that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he
+wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the
+principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them
+for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of
+England,” “the President of France,” “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_200" id="page_200">{200}</a></span> King of Italy,” “the Emperor
+of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.
+He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual
+appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the
+saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;
+Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on
+all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had
+planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the
+knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s
+destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy
+morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,
+sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit
+him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION" id="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION"></a>THE LION’S LAMENTATION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HEY are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Over the frontier they’re swarming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But grin as if its melody were charming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Really, the prospect is alarming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_201" id="page_201">{201}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Except he be a Corydon or Carey.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Am I not your father and your mother?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the dudes of London your image will caress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And we’ll be the world to one another.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And&mdash;my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That d&mdash;d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_202" id="page_202">{202}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="MEMORIAL_ODE" id="MEMORIAL_ODE"></a>MEMORIAL ODE<br /><br />
+<small>TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E meet to-night to greet a name<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Symbolical for fifty years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mingle with the empty glee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of laugh and cheer from English throat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A new tone in this Jubilee,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A strong, discordant, Irish note.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">What has she done for us or ours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in her garlanding of flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We should conceal our Irish chain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When on the dreary roadside lying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were babe and mother faint and dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When heaped were nameless Irish graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When every blast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That swept the mast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fever ship was moaning, sighing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The story of an awful crime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ringing down the aisles of Time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has filled the universe with song&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What act of mercy, gentle, human,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_203" id="page_203">{203}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What deed of grace to prove her woman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What sign gave she that Irish true man<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could treasure in his heart to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A token of her Jubilee?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">She came when but one spring had spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its buds above our dark decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around, among, between the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her idle, pompous journey lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She saw a million graves, but shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No tear to wash the sin away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before or since what ear hath heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In all our years of dark eclipse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One feeble protest, or a word<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of pity from her queenly lips.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, when our fearsome famine wail<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he stretched hand to save the Gael,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her jealous pride returned his dole.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">A faithful mother&mdash;so the bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That rends the bleating lamb apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brings it with her cubs to share,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Betrays a fond, maternal heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_204" id="page_204">{204}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A faithful wife&mdash;from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert&mdash;poor Myles Joyce.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a><br /></span>
+
+<span class="i0">And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At memory of the loved ones lost&mdash;butchered in this half-century’s reign.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims of landlord wrath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the Atlantic’s lonely path;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back from the scaffold’s gloom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of madhouse and union tomb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to West over every sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march in her Jubilee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands and swear to-night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm, through good and ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_205" id="page_205">{205}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_ORANGE_ORATION" id="AN_ORANGE_ORATION"></a>AN ORANGE ORATION.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find
+the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are
+Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from
+Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German
+independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to
+the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of
+the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the
+persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as
+steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of
+the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious
+nation&mdash;Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,
+Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant
+nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so
+irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the
+voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a
+description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in
+love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they
+are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will
+find his natural place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_206" id="page_206">{206}</a></span> in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the
+benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent
+features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in
+Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far
+penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,
+as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well
+testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything
+connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of
+superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest
+a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a
+lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence
+to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that
+England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently
+the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical
+composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a
+notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to
+shun everything green as he would the small-pox&mdash;there was only one
+color for a devout Christian to patronize&mdash;orange. God had not decorated
+the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful
+tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,
+when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose
+ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an
+Orangeman of the deepest purple<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_207" id="page_207">{207}</a></span> dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural
+and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his
+heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie
+down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp
+to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions
+on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old
+woman who declined to shout “To h&mdash;with the Pope” at his modest request.</p>
+
+<p>He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,
+of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that
+awakens the enthusiasm of his class:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Brethren&mdash;We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of
+the great, the glorious, the pious, and the&mdash;the&mdash;the Orange-headed
+William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,
+I&mdash;I&mdash;as a matter of fact I&mdash;I&mdash;get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time
+in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity
+to&mdash;to&mdash;to, in short&mdash;drink his memory&mdash;that is to say, to drink&mdash;to
+drink&mdash;to&mdash;oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes
+are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they
+swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,
+and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but
+are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their
+toes&mdash;their big toes&mdash;upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass
+this&mdash;this&mdash;this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put
+down, to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_208" id="page_208">{208}</a></span> certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious
+gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls&mdash;of&mdash;of&mdash;well, they
+struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants
+won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more
+nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into
+Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has
+departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid
+believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.
+(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the
+sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and
+whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us
+and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill
+your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory
+of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;
+here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey
+with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of
+England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to
+glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of
+Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,
+bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of
+diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in
+the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free
+fights.)<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_209" id="page_209">{209}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL" id="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL"></a>SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HAT Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had a rule so universal as I claim?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As my ensign of destruction and of shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My dominion rules their bodies not alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their future, as their present, is my own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His tortured slaves in death at last were free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Belongs for all eternity to me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If he once began to worship at my shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_210" id="page_210">{210}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not give the drunkard time to even think.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Common helots struggle madly to be free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I whet the murderer’s knife&mdash;rob mother, children, wife&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS" id="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS"></a>CONTRARY COGNOMENS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_211" id="page_211">{211}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING" id="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING"></a>AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>NGELINA Seraphina<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wilhelmina Murphy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See on knees here Ebenezer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Julius Cæsar Durphy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To a dozen ladies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose and Ella, Annabella,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Mirella Bradys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_212" id="page_212">{212}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What to me now e’er can be now<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hippolita Flanagan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sweet Dora Leonora<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Otherwise O’Branagan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Anastatia Hoolahan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Miranda Alexandra<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May Amanda Woolahan?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Roderigo Paul Diego<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Burke may try his part again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Bernardo Leonardo<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Furey seek your heart again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Just espouse my cause, my dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I swear I’ll give our heir<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A name to break your jaws, my dear!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM" id="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM"></a>THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>E slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_213" id="page_213">{213}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His dream was changed: again he stood&mdash;and she was by his side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_214" id="page_214">{214}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,&mdash;but now in death!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_215" id="page_215">{215}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FREDERICKS_FOLLY" id="FREDERICKS_FOLLY"></a>FREDERICK’S FOLLY.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from
+Rathmines,&mdash;which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of
+the Hibernian metropolis,&mdash;there boarded, lodged, and sent out his
+washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young
+gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in
+that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer
+walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day
+whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To
+spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose
+to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the
+clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his
+official signature.</p>
+
+<p>Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was
+also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his
+landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling
+Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.
+But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a
+quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his
+face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less
+susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.
+He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He
+would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_216" id="page_216">{216}</a></span> fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine
+weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &amp;
+Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to
+change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut
+article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a
+countess.</p>
+
+<p>He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having
+time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.
+He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British
+Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being
+subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four
+dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.
+Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely
+got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium
+before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not&mdash;well, not quite
+a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly
+martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or
+the&mdash;hem&mdash;nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.</p>
+
+<p>“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial
+artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of&mdash;I mean as the
+raven’s wing.”</p>
+
+<p>Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought
+of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the
+dye.</p>
+
+<p>“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the
+scissors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_217" id="page_217">{217}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed
+sort of a mustache&mdash;what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and
+odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between
+the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the
+coiffeur’s opinion.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a
+beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”</p>
+
+<p>A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of
+your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the
+lather-pot.</p>
+
+<p>They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar
+remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the
+principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed
+with his evil genius.</p>
+
+<p>“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as
+a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”</p>
+
+<p>Alas! He took the Depilatory.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the
+curling-tongs.</p>
+
+<p>No, he wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.
+Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming
+monotonous. However, he admitted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_218" id="page_218">{218}</a></span> that the speculator who bought his
+teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a
+fortune by the investment.</p>
+
+<p>“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your
+teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look
+gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.
+Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”</p>
+
+<p>Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic
+talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair
+dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had
+arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every
+now and then <i>en route</i>, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the
+bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He
+was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then
+another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for
+about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the
+last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,
+he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking
+hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he
+volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know
+him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s
+astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic
+personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the
+house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the
+domestic doorstep, replied<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_219" id="page_219">{219}</a></span> emphatically, “I should rather think so!”
+upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that
+Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting
+his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of
+supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below
+Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred
+gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that
+there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on
+the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested
+himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.</p>
+
+<p>At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning
+sob of fate, the candle went out!</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more
+composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,
+he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little
+Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his
+with envy and chagrin?</p>
+
+<p>He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined
+friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet
+requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his
+jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of
+Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a
+sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He
+tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_220" id="page_220">{220}</a></span> imperial? Why not?
+He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration
+complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little
+Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber&mdash;to dream he had
+Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the
+Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.</p>
+
+<p class="dttsc">. . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when
+Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer&mdash;that last toddy, no
+doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.
+Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of
+civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out
+upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that
+made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the
+last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating
+madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable
+officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a
+square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police
+manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,
+and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with
+a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that
+he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of
+his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other
+assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he
+promptly turned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_221" id="page_221">{221}</a></span> nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched
+forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,
+chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a
+varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded
+them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in
+wild and dripping confusion.</p>
+
+<p>That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an
+excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and
+there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque
+night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut
+lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his
+nose&mdash;cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird
+melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”</p>
+
+<p>It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his
+teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning
+over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his
+curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head
+altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction
+of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its
+growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had
+invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so
+renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of
+a walnut escritoire.</p>
+
+<p>Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had
+anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is
+now another’s.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_222" id="page_222">{222}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONSTABLE_X" id="CONSTABLE_X"></a>CONSTABLE X.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HOSE walk is so stately and grand round the beat?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kisses the book with a resonant smack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he, even he, that great creature, has known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_223" id="page_223">{223}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has even unbended to laughter and sport,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY" id="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY"></a>LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>URROUNDED by bottles and flagons and bowls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Devil pursued his terrible task.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hatred and lust, and all the horde<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when it was brimming with fever and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Another flask in his hand he raised<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doses of poverty, doses of crime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every region, for every clime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_224" id="page_224">{224}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And then a barrel he seized to fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With grief and affliction, pain and ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till God’s image became but a senseless log,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the demon yell as each toper fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN" id="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN"></a>THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>M I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_225" id="page_225">{225}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That muscle and brain were contented below;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a very small gift from our riches contents<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But now there’s a muttering startling and strange<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A really absurd and ridiculous plan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To ostracize gold and to dignify man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The base common herd won’t submit any more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a rule that their fathers found proper before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the veriest scum of the gutters invents<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS" id="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS"></a>WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.<br /><br />
+<small>AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NCE again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_226" id="page_226">{226}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mists and clouds of two long decades&mdash;picture visions far away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_227" id="page_227">{227}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_228" id="page_228">{228}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE" id="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE"></a>THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>REAT chieftain, o’er thy silent clay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grief knows no frontier line to-day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Among the gifts the nation showers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shamrock wreath among the flowers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A type its emerald leaflets three<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy best attributes will be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faith, Courage, and Humanity.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Courage that with disaster rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mercy to brave but beaten foes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her defence with thee and thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our exiled race were found in line.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With thee we bore the storm and stress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hard-fought retreat and onward press<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_229" id="page_229">{229}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy eagle glances oft might scan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our Celtic features in the van<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When battle surged round Sheridan.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And never poured the crimson flood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mark where desperate valor stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So as your life-stream then we fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er your own brave nation bled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our tears to-day with hers are shed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our grief now sobs with your regrets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our shamrocks fringe your violets.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="MAINE_AND_MAYO" id="MAINE_AND_MAYO"></a>MAINE AND MAYO.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>IX months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_230" id="page_230">{230}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I’m very glad to meet ye&mdash;I’m a stranger from Mayo.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_231" id="page_231">{231}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_232" id="page_232">{232}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH" id="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH"></a>A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>ANDY ROW, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in
+Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its
+true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,
+the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from
+prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To
+h&mdash;with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its
+consecrated&mdash;whiskey consecrated&mdash;shore, that Papist foot would be
+carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it
+contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of
+the desecrated pavement.</p>
+
+<p>In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one
+Green&mdash;Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and
+immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread
+as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan
+Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in
+more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional
+anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his
+campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable
+commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,
+but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has
+suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half
+a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_233" id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in
+consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his
+back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,
+banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,
+blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National
+League invaders.</p>
+
+<p>For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners
+and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an
+assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal
+principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no
+salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.</p>
+
+<p>During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of
+Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a
+howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given
+musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent
+continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval
+for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor
+gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a
+short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’
+duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red
+Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached
+the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the
+influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with
+the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_234" id="page_234">{234}</a></span> scales and
+variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in
+scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into
+which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with
+heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,
+and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;
+and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening
+lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear
+at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs
+in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted
+yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the
+thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass
+kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,
+ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that
+you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.</p>
+
+<p>From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there
+isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or
+symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call
+it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about
+four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.</p>
+
+<p>The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to
+this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this
+systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old
+boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_235" id="page_235">{235}</a></span>up culinary
+utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established
+a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been
+exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate
+measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.
+They were adopted.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order&mdash;each
+man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander&mdash;a
+kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously
+maddening marauders!</p>
+
+<p>Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,
+rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.</p>
+
+<p>Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving
+stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.</p>
+
+<p>The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and
+completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a
+marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long
+cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord
+Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes
+and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?</p>
+
+<p>About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis
+commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they
+had got through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_236" id="page_236">{236}</a></span> the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some
+Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his
+night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly
+raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly
+perfected.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark,&mdash;so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent
+choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle
+rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught
+a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering
+gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a
+step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled
+round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a
+hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,
+and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different
+cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical
+training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,
+paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.</p>
+
+<p>Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,
+like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in
+the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by
+Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of
+the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron
+spirit of Mrs. T.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_237" id="page_237">{237}</a></span> was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower
+of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he
+turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the
+grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels
+off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the
+air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all
+the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon
+his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new
+veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the
+Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been
+witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the
+spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of
+pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and
+the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out
+by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men
+that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with
+pickaxes and shovels.</p>
+
+<p>Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111
+forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a
+tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He
+thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain
+their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for
+carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with
+the contents of a tinker’s budget&mdash;why, he’ll join the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_238" id="page_238">{238}</a></span> Fenians, that’s
+all. They have one motto he appreciates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HETHER on the scaffold high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or in the battle’s van,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fittest place for man to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is where he dies for man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an
+old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not
+going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.
+1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here lies the body of Billy Green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As true a grand master as ever was seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But although he was green and decidedly fat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">cat.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE" id="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE"></a>THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.<br /><br />
+<small>A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">D</span>OWN by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_239" id="page_239">{239}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curses in purest American; such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Room for the rest of the languages&mdash;there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naught but profanity ever in vogue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God has ordained they should travel together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunshine and harmony&mdash;natural growth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right down among us he stepped: all the while<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sang at our windows for all they were worth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nobody hunted the right or left bower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deserts put verdure on&mdash;one little flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s <i>thurrum pogue</i><a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_240" id="page_240">{240}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ARAB_WAR_SONG" id="ARAB_WAR_SONG"></a>ARAB WAR SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>LLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their valor will scatter his merciless bands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their fury will break on his terrified host<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is melting before our wild charges in spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_241" id="page_241">{241}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better freedom in death than existence in chains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike swiftly, and spare not&mdash;yon turbanless crowd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK" id="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK"></a>HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block
+were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and
+what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a
+completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.
+Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.
+His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his
+place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have
+them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night
+to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.
+He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his
+gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful
+jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby
+through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay
+at the parlor door by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_242" id="page_242">{242}</a></span> ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to
+take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue
+of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen
+variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him
+as a signal to chaw him up&mdash;under such circumstances one don’t feel
+inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.</p>
+
+<p>Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of
+life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of
+the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You
+never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some
+horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to
+envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had
+with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered
+hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power
+sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in
+a sling for a fortnight afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all
+kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded
+slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he
+believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life
+that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest
+his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring
+his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him
+half an hour to sit down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_243" id="page_243">{243}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion
+is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has
+carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in
+a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in
+a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he
+would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he
+has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he
+thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another
+crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred
+or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and
+didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round
+about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the
+mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a
+picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked
+before&mdash;that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s
+sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking
+attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve
+his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has
+travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic
+arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that
+he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not
+to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.
+With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going
+over his half-dozen ordinary albums it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_244" id="page_244">{244}</a></span> is really magnificent to be able
+to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his
+remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he
+can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs
+of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN" id="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN"></a>NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> HAVE never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.</p>
+
+<p>I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.</p>
+
+<p>There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,
+who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my
+marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my
+string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>I thirsted for his blood.</p>
+
+<p>I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my
+part&mdash;in fact, it took several parts of me.</p>
+
+<p>I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled
+my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to
+complete the structure.</p>
+
+<p>Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of
+boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was
+illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,&mdash;the position.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_245" id="page_245">{245}</a></span> Figure
+2,&mdash;one for his nob. Figure 3,&mdash;the body blow. Figure 4,&mdash;the return.
+Figure 5,&mdash;the upper cut. Figure 6,&mdash;the cross-counter.</p>
+
+<p>I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,
+till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of
+P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or
+whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could
+have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”</p>
+
+<p>But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults
+with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed
+my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered
+“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the
+bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders
+and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a
+conquering hero.</p>
+
+<p>At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment
+had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself
+to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me
+when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>He came.</p>
+
+<p>I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the
+proper figures for the various stages of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the
+improvised ring, tied a handker<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_246" id="page_246">{246}</a></span>chief for a belt round my waist, and
+wanted to shake hands <i>a la</i> Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.</p>
+
+<p>Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another
+figure&mdash;which happened to be me.</p>
+
+<p>“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,
+because it resulted in two or three for <i>my</i> nob, and while I was trying
+to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,
+“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the
+regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something
+came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground
+with the back of my head.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called
+“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had
+to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my
+left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill
+soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I
+sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the
+other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared
+“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp&mdash;“He won’t let me,” before there
+was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,
+and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.</p>
+
+<p>I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen
+to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green
+sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more
+diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_247" id="page_247">{247}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY" id="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY"></a>THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few
+years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,
+who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of
+all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a
+student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and
+bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from
+a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of
+it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that
+crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest
+knocked him out in one short round.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dr. Blank we shall call him&mdash;a Crichton was he;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a science or language earth ever has known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany&mdash;these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theology, Medicine, Strategy&mdash;pshaw!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which left intellects minor some eras behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dons of the College&mdash;our doctor could boast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An intimate knowledge of every tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_248" id="page_248">{248}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not his be the blame&mdash;no, the odium must rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA" id="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA"></a>A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> WOULD sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under
+the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so
+dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs
+up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for
+that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there
+that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home
+are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the
+executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic
+dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a
+conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not
+be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed
+a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his
+drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_249" id="page_249">{249}</a></span> of the day. I had
+barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey
+wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a
+red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a
+miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,
+a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various
+stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied
+articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with
+thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the
+two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags
+and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to
+guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced
+to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the
+odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the
+kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every
+contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started
+homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such
+stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear
+of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the
+irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was
+blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few
+dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney
+pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a
+garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_250" id="page_250">{250}</a></span>
+native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the
+situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,
+and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude
+of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,
+vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at
+irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and
+such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to
+count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It
+would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my
+top-coat was like!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="PEGGY_OSHEA" id="PEGGY_OSHEA"></a>PEGGY O’SHEA.<br /><br />
+<small>AN IRISH SERENADE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4"><span class="letra">T</span>HE pale moon is beaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The bright stars are gleaming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Awake from thy dreaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Acushla, arise!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For sure the moon’s light, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Though vivid an’ bright, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is but darkest night, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Compared with your eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Glimmerin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shimmerin’,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">Down in the river there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_251" id="page_251">{251}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4">See, your own thrue love<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is waitin’ for you, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So waken anew, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ gladden my sight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Don’t keep me quakin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">All the long night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Quiverin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shiverin’,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">Faith it’s Decimber, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freezes me, teases me&mdash;darlin’ don’t stay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4">This morn had you been, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With me, you’d have seen, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A new dress of green, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I bought&mdash;for, you mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But last week you said, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You hated the red, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So get out of bed, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ let down the blind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shyly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Slyly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creep to the window now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_252" id="page_252">{252}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Why have you waited<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">So long, whin you stated<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">To me that you hated<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">The red of our foes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">While you are keepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Me here with your sleepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">The color is creepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">All over my nose!<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Face it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Chase it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet it with bravery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Och, you are there now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">So purty and fair now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">I raley declare, now<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">I’m murthered outright;<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">My mouth seems like butter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">I hardly can mutter<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">A sintince, or utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">A word, love, to-night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">Thumpin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">An’ bumpin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_253" id="page_253">{253}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT" id="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT"></a>THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was one poor limping creature&mdash;the embodiment of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I questioned him&mdash;this blighted one&mdash;I asked him what the reason<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_254" id="page_254">{254}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Don’t my uniform tell you that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Am of the unfortunate band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom you see day by day passing by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never pausing a moment to stand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, in one perpetual round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forever are marching, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seems that while one of us stays overground<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fate ordains he shall never be still.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Tis hard when the bright golden sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smiles out from a clear azure sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till his glory has gone and passed by.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And e’en along green country lanes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who would care to be tramping all day?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Then why do you wonder to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An unlucky sad mortal complain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or say, are you looking for smiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From a fellow who feels on the rack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After walking some twenty odd miles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On a path like a porcupine’s back?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“They say that the Muscovite knout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the back of a troublesome peasant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When wielded by hands that are stout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is decidedly very unpleasant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_255" id="page_255">{255}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Caused aught but delightful sensations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what were their tortures of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Compared to our new innovations?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“No martyr that ever yet died<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In those times that have long passed away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My feet are denuded of skin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My toes every one are disjointed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the most of our pavement is pointed!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save where an occasional flaw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leaves a hole in to gather the rain&mdash;”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That emptied a neighboring tavern,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had planted one foot on a peak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While the other was lost in a cavern!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then his language assumed such a tone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And one not by any means sweeter&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That they couldn’t be put into metre.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thus my sad narrative ends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As I left the poor tortured one raving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_256" id="page_256">{256}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS" id="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS"></a>APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall
+have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s
+mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist
+Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the
+census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and
+on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her
+mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who
+is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage
+in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another
+ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan
+retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last
+column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical
+expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she
+filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,
+blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages
+afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be
+known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively
+on that occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary
+difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of
+them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she
+threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_257" id="page_257">{257}</a></span> and her sitting
+weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a
+compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity
+is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,&mdash;occasionally.”</p>
+
+<p>If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal
+position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is
+fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on
+figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her
+appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of
+adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not
+called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or
+so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her
+record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful
+figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at
+that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years
+ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon
+and bottle-feeding.</p>
+
+<p>The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is
+the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it
+for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a
+commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey
+without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and
+lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the
+corner into our street on his return from a mont<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_258" id="page_258">{258}</a></span>h’s absence he is the
+central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young
+Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his
+arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in
+his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.
+He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities
+until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.
+The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success
+as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal
+signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we
+call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,
+John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or
+Theodore&mdash;Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter
+fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we
+feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.
+“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or
+an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you
+short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We
+have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s
+at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,
+and&mdash;” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and
+knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be
+followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some
+of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_259" id="page_259">{259}</a></span> some refuge
+to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling
+whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be
+left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.</p>
+
+<p>But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a
+father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper
+should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist&mdash;there was another
+Robinson <i>en route</i>. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent
+the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came&mdash;in twos, in threes,
+in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,
+and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast
+in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt
+like Noah&mdash;only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the
+dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,
+and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers
+present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had
+been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room
+was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one
+corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the
+twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling
+with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church
+yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and
+he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?
+Send me a volume, four hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_260" id="page_260">{260}</a></span> pages, bound in morocco, forty names on
+a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two
+or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m
+ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,
+let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”
+and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson
+was at home this census time.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN" id="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN"></a>NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>ANK on rank they march together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the lanes and o’er the heather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rhythmic ringing beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of their measured swinging feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music bears in martial tone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the land they call their own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy land that proudly boasts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not coerced, unwilling hosts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But around her throne can feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts whose love no bribes retain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hands that never strike in vain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the fields of yellow grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through the woods of leafy green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here and there on many a plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are their snowy targets seen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mountains echo back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their peaks the rifles’ crack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_261" id="page_261">{261}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Freedom knows how keen of eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Firm of nerve and quick of finger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the marksmen brave who vie<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the skill they freely bring her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bunker Hill and Concord tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have won their laurels well.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And should war assail our shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still to guard it ever ready<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As their fathers were of yore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calm, yet eager, true and steady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the loyal ranks that play<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But at mimic strife to-day.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN" id="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN"></a>A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HEY have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society
+rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.
+E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina
+cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.
+R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical
+instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a
+sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the
+bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of
+“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in
+which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment
+might be dangerous. It might have led<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_262" id="page_262">{262}</a></span> to revolution, and it wouldn’t be
+logical&mdash;or geological&mdash;to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific
+symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay
+ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of
+antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly
+mastodon.</p>
+
+<p>I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered
+during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour
+or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been
+kind enough to label them&mdash;“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land
+Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the
+Bone Age,” etc.</p>
+
+<p>I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement
+in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell
+what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the
+“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,
+with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been
+told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned
+not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery
+gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the
+whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be
+inspired by the sight of this&mdash;this&mdash;this ancient weapon&mdash;it is
+evidently a spear-head&mdash;which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic
+warrior of old has probably pierced<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_263" id="page_263">{263}</a></span> many a proud invader’s breast. This
+spear-head, ladies and gentlemen&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty
+bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some
+repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the
+pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to
+finish a job outside!”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="JONESS_UMBRELLA" id="JONESS_UMBRELLA"></a>JONES’S UMBRELLA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past
+week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the
+whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the
+atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable
+character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth
+wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the
+heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses
+of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to
+have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in
+view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a
+scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar
+continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,
+principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford
+shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of
+an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,
+but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_264" id="page_264">{264}</a></span>turb a seam in it.
+It has only one defect. Given sufficient space&mdash;say Yellowstone Park,
+and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when
+Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those
+occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left
+their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the
+umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower
+that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that
+umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the
+street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated
+arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the
+direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones
+held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones
+held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family
+quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops
+that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of
+confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and
+a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed
+and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,
+dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously
+about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It
+was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few
+shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and
+tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed
+by his coat-tails, and sat down once or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_265" id="page_265">{265}</a></span> twice quite unexpectedly in
+Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let
+the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He
+hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow
+restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA" id="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA"></a>LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has
+nearly done for Guffin.</p>
+
+<p>Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his
+nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows
+much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is
+poetic, she is romantic&mdash;in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,
+and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion
+with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than
+soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the
+prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money&mdash;so far,
+in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts
+it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,
+in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden&mdash;Mrs.
+Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no
+place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre
+when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_266" id="page_266">{266}</a></span>blighted the future of an
+ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of
+pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite
+fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank&mdash;a sort
+of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker
+has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no
+longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future
+porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,
+and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of
+sausages.</p>
+
+<p>The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her
+appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a
+martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.
+They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically
+and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the
+Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most
+vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.
+would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,
+housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,
+donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a
+hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,
+stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning
+to get gray with such orders as&mdash;“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval
+noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et
+demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head
+in the straw, and wonder why he was born.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_267" id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame
+aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.
+Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French
+at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told
+him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how
+Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron
+Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter
+performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is
+ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be
+a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell
+on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find
+it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a
+half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin
+can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the
+point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch
+a tent on.</p>
+
+<p>Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and
+when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is
+disappointing.</p>
+
+<p>But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might
+be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very
+much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and
+death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was
+leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against
+her beating heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_268" id="page_268">{268}</a></span> the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes
+turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey
+unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to
+squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the
+only seat that could accommodate her&mdash;the sofa, and looked as
+consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.
+Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched
+him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself
+wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,
+and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a
+half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or
+less, he broke into rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a
+pig in a nightmare?”</p>
+
+<p>“Pig!” shrieked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of
+you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.
+Julia, order the carriage.”</p>
+
+<p>Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl
+responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.</p>
+
+<p>“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s
+Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you
+have a rasher?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_269" id="page_269">{269}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,
+Julia, to quit this abode of&mdash;of&mdash;this abode of&mdash;this maison du diable,
+there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal
+Guffin.</p>
+
+<p>“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be
+in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”</p>
+
+<p>“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up
+la chapeau de mon pere.”</p>
+
+<p>“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.
+And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your
+French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.
+You’ve upset me so much with your d&mdash;&mdash;d rubbishy parley-vooing and
+moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with
+a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if
+you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know
+what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll
+put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front
+door-step all day. D&mdash;&mdash;n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next
+Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll
+begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let
+folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every
+house for two miles around.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their
+French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and
+child flung themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_270" id="page_270">{270}</a></span> upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped
+themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes
+out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the
+elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived
+this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is
+so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution
+of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for
+a shutter.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE" id="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE"></a>CALCRAFT AND PRICE.<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a><br /><br />
+<small>A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H! England’s the gem of the waters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pride of the foam-crested sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are always contented and free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unknown are all want and starvation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her subjects are strangers to vice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bulwarks of this model nation<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wherever this proud nation’s standard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unfurls its red folds to the light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of freedom, and progress, and right.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_271" id="page_271">{271}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wherever their footsteps have trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the aid of the bayonet and cannon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They’ve planted the altar of God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the teachers of heretic notions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have been silent and quiet as mice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear they should pay their devotions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or breathes there a serf who would mutter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With a sound word or two of advice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if Irish, he soon will discover<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The logic of Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, horror! you might have been given<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A Republican birthright to own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thank God, that your blood is untainted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You’re subjects of England&mdash;how nice!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With Calcraft or Governor Price!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_272" id="page_272">{272}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE" id="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE"></a>ENTITLED TO A RAISE.<br /><br />
+<small>SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HIS is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His blood was cool&mdash;(discipline’s rule)&mdash;he made no moan, so he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_273" id="page_273">{273}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is silly, he is loyal,&mdash;he is all a Sub should be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING" id="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING"></a>THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.<br /><br />
+<small>THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN THOMPSON was a postman who<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though not deeply read, ’tis true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was still a Man of Letters.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He paid attention to one Kate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Maria Julia Jervis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she did not appreciate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">John Thompson’s Civil Service.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_274" id="page_274">{274}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor let my love-suit fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And don’t Despatch this Mail.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But she replied, in accents grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“I love you not&mdash;decamp!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he spoke again&mdash;she gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her foot an Extra Stamp.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And cried, “My anger you awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your speech on insult borders,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m poor, but I would scorn to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your vile Post-office Orders.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And moaned in accents shivery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pray pardon its Delivery.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He left the room with footsteps slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A bitter lesson taught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then to counteract the blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A pillar-box he sought.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He felt how foolish was the tact<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In courtship he had boasted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And recognized the solemn fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That he was badly Posted.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_275" id="page_275">{275}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER" id="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER"></a>SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE cobbler’s always cheerful, though<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His path of life be crost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He does not tear his hair in woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whene’er his all is lost.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He welts a lot, but not the wife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With whom his lot is cast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still faithful to the last.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Onward his motto, aye, he strives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To grasp some other feat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the dullest times contrives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Somehow to make ends meet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world may smite him without cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He never shuns its whacks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seldom grumbles at the laws<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That regulate his tax.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We know but little of the good<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His many acts reveal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their understandings heal.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And a much higher motive yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His generous heart controls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would not see that saint forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their perishable souls.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_276" id="page_276">{276}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS" id="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS"></a>A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest
+shanty of Jones, in our street.</p>
+
+<p>“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at
+breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with
+the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the
+domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones
+works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t
+say less; he was afraid to say more.</p>
+
+<p>“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”</p>
+
+<p>Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour
+in question.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished
+to know where you spent your evening.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a
+kind of a description of&mdash;you don’t understand these things, Maria, but
+we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I
+thought&mdash;that is, we thought&mdash;a few of us thought, you know&mdash;a whole lot
+of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand&mdash;to&mdash;to
+avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you consulted, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we
+decided on a whole lot of things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_277" id="page_277">{277}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“What time did you decide on breaking up?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish
+financiers&mdash;Baron Rothschild, and&mdash;and the rest of the Rothschilds, and
+the chief rabbis&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve
+been working the oracle&mdash;and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here
+Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining
+matters as lucidly as was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the
+almshouse before you die, at the rate&mdash;the poor rate&mdash;you’re going on.
+What else?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the
+monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal
+of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six
+per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things
+have gone so far that, that&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took
+your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the
+scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that
+you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about
+the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the
+proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled
+‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in
+the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians
+and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,
+the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_278" id="page_278">{278}</a></span> down in the coal scuttle,
+and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed
+some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried
+to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;
+and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your
+coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,
+you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red
+hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I
+have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for
+five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any
+longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed
+commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a
+remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it
+is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in
+a quiet kitchen in South Boston.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS" id="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS"></a>AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>EIGHO for the morning, murky and dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, heedless of threatening cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ventured to visit the green College park,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mingled along with the crowd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am almost now on insanity’s brink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And this I attribute to<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either a fairy attired in pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or an angel whose robe was blue.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_279" id="page_279">{279}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world considered my heart was flint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And futile were womanly wiles&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Glances and glittering smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My journey of life to go through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To say nothing of beauty in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bachelor’s buttons and fare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That Benedicts weepingly share.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To join the Hymeneal crew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or a lovely commander in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For frivolous chatter and talk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was interested in every race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Jump and hurdle and walk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of course it can hardly be true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the mile by a stayer in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I mean in futurity’s days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I go to races to cover my eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With glasses to temper my gaze,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_280" id="page_280">{280}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or equally dangerous blue.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE" id="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE"></a>A MUSICAL REVENGE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>’M sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean
+of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is
+oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to
+sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed
+with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,
+and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with
+forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly
+residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly
+utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to
+undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be
+a welcome change.</p>
+
+<p>But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.
+For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers
+of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the
+trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his
+frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a
+fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations
+on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had <i>one</i> night from<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_281" id="page_281">{281}</a></span> me. They
+won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the
+melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of
+his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my
+cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the
+tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising
+for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed
+successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured
+the presence of a fife and drum&mdash;principally drum&mdash;band from a Grand
+Army post.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time
+all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to
+quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants
+of the disturbed district.</p>
+
+<p>But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the
+perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,
+till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or
+instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering
+locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,
+as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each
+artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The
+bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if
+all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s
+interference<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_282" id="page_282">{282}</a></span> with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”
+with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled
+like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had
+never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The
+melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band
+wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of
+its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice
+assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of
+the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division
+of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at
+suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand
+finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within
+half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a
+lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them
+another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT" id="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT"></a>A LIAR LAID OUT.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who
+certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give
+weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London
+<i>Times</i> in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The
+whoppers that spreader of lies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_283" id="page_283">{283}</a></span> and light can tell would raise the hair
+on the head of an Egyptian mummy.</p>
+
+<p>But he met his match last week.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an
+acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of
+course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing
+and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my
+friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that
+he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the
+truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in
+him&mdash;very much in him&mdash;it’s impossible to get it out of him.</p>
+
+<p>I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I
+regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future
+member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all
+there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that
+Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured
+it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the
+Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a
+strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen
+from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him
+at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden
+legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was
+smoking<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_284" id="page_284">{284}</a></span> it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of
+teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the
+regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own
+gums. He showed it to Dipps.</p>
+
+<p>I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He
+exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured
+out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of
+the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,
+a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express
+purpose of making that stick.</p>
+
+<p>The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had
+another walking-stick at home&mdash;made out of the thigh bone of the
+engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to
+carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and
+would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising
+from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler
+in cold weather to warm himself.</p>
+
+<p>Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be
+put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He
+called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the
+centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a
+diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was
+worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic
+shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_285" id="page_285">{285}</a></span> had passed into Dipps’s
+hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first
+met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel
+Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say
+anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if
+you’re able.”</p>
+
+<p>Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t
+squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary&mdash;it was
+almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a
+companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the
+assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been
+divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,
+and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom
+Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent
+of the New York <i>Herald</i> Central African tourist pumped that saline
+particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling
+in the interest which it must inspire.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,
+that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic
+treasure?”</p>
+
+<p>“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the
+Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he
+embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley
+<i>didn’t</i> shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_286" id="page_286">{286}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE" id="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE"></a>MULROONEY.&mdash;A TROOPER’S TALE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_287" id="page_287">{287}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_288" id="page_288">{288}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The captain played his cards with skill&mdash;his triumph almost came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish
+newspapers, was debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich
+comic cartoons in <i>Pat</i>, the <i>Weekly News</i>, the <i>Weekly Freeman</i>, and
+<i>United Ireland</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the
+Ribbon or Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the
+Speaker or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside
+for twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the
+course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every five
+minutes or so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester,
+England, for their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy,
+two Fenian leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies
+being refused to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the
+occasion of a demonstration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and
+Michael Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two
+Fenian leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into
+effect it was not believed that the first political execution since that
+of Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old
+Swan Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger
+brought news of the execution instead.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Allen&mdash;nineteen years old.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> O’Brien&mdash;A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s
+Irish Brigade.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Larkin&mdash;An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on
+Jan. 23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished
+themselves by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to
+Ireland. On the morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses
+above was found posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of
+Ireland. The poem had previously appeared in an American paper.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after
+he had been executed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Give me a kiss.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a
+British jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be
+remembered for years.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62180 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: An Irish Crazy-Quilt
+
+Author: Arthur M. Forrester
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2020 [EBook #62180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sonya Schermann, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
+
+                     SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO
+                            SONG AND STORY.
+
+                                  BY
+                         ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
+
+                                BOSTON:
+           ALFRED MUDGE & SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.
+                                 1891.
+
+
+                              COPYRIGHT,
+                                 1890,
+                        BY ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
+
+
+                                TO THE
+
+                         “FELONS” OF IRELAND,
+
+                      THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,
+
+            WHO HAVE BEEN EXILED OR IMPRISONED OR EXECUTED
+
+            BECAUSE THEY LOVED THEIR NATIVE LAND MORE THAN
+                       HOME OR LIBERTY OR LIFE,
+
+                              This Volume
+
+                      IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+SONGS AND BALLADS.
+
+                                                                    PAGE.
+
+The Church of Ballymore                                                7
+
+The Old Boreen                                                         9
+
+The Irish Schoolhouse                                                 11
+
+Pat Murphy’s Cows                                                     13
+
+Father Tom Malone                                                     16
+
+You Can Guess                                                         18
+
+Only!                                                                 19
+
+Songs of Innisfail                                                    20
+
+The Lord of Kenmare                                                   32
+
+An Old Irish Tune                                                     39
+
+Harvey Duff                                                           45
+
+Ivan Petrokoffsky                                                     52
+
+The Emperor’s Ring                                                    54
+
+Black Loris                                                           56
+
+The Red Heart Daisy                                                   67
+
+The Tide is Turning                                                   68
+
+Our Own Again                                                         70
+
+The Tale of a Tail                                                    71
+
+The Seasick Sub-Commissioners                                         75
+
+Clare Constabulary Caione                                             77
+
+Clause Twenty-six                                                     78
+
+Jenkins, M. P.                                                        80
+
+Thady Malone                                                          81
+
+Rory’s Reverie                                                        83
+
+Our Land Shall be Free                                               102
+
+The Felons of Our Land                                               111
+
+An Official Valuation                                                112
+
+A Bewildered Boycotter                                               113
+
+A Complaint of Coercion                                              115
+
+O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)                                           118
+
+The Fenian’s Dream                                                   119
+
+The Speaker’s Complaint                                              126
+
+Erin Machree                                                         128
+
+Balfour’s Wish                                                       135
+
+Our Cause                                                            136
+
+Served Him Right                                                     138
+
+Rapparee Song                                                        140
+
+To the Landlords of Ireland                                          141
+
+Balfour Rejoices                                                     142
+
+The Irish Brigade                                                    149
+
+Faithful to the Last                                                 156
+
+Fenian Battle Song                                                   158
+
+The Grave of the Martyrs                                             159
+
+Death’s Victory                                                      160
+
+The Green Flag at Fredericksburg                                     161
+
+The Flag of Our Land                                                 162
+
+Hurrah for Liberty                                                   163
+
+The Messenger                                                        165
+
+John Bull’s Appeal                                                   175
+
+The Story of a Bomb                                                  177
+
+Avenging, Though Dim                                                 180
+
+Christmas Dirge of London
+Police                                                               180
+
+Ireland’s Prayer                                                     182
+
+John Bull’s New Year                                                 183
+
+Ready and Steady                                                     185
+
+The Charge of the Guards                                             193
+
+An Address to Slaves                                                 195
+
+The Lion’s Lamentation                                               200
+
+Memorial Ode to Irish Dead                                           202
+
+Song of King Alcohol                                                 209
+
+Contrary Cognomens                                                   210
+
+An Æsthetic Wooing                                                   211
+
+The Drunkard’s Dream                                                 212
+
+Constable X                                                          222
+
+Lucifer’s Laboratory                                                 223
+
+The Monopolist’s Moan                                                224
+
+With the Grand Army Veterans                                         225
+
+The Irish Soldier at Grant’s
+Grave                                                                228
+
+Maine and Mayo                                                       229
+
+The Priest with the Brogue                                           238
+
+Arab War Song                                                        240
+
+The Linguist of the Liffey                                           247
+
+Peggy O’Shea                                                         250
+
+The Boston Carrier’s Plaint                                          253
+
+New England’s Marksmen                                               260
+
+Calcraft and Price                                                   270
+
+Entitled to a Raise                                                  272
+
+The Postman’s Wooing                                                 273
+
+Sonnets to a Shoemaker                                               275
+
+At the College Sports                                                278
+
+Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale                                          286
+
+
+STORIES AND SKETCHES.
+
+Taming a Tiger                                                        22
+
+Ryan’s Revenge                                                        34
+
+Harvey Duff                                                           40
+
+A Seditious Slide                                                     47
+
+Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?                                                58
+
+A Double Surprise                                                     86
+
+Philipson’s Party                                                    103
+
+That Traitor Timmins                                                 129
+
+A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner                                          144
+
+Snooks                                                               151
+
+Caledonian Candlesticks                                              152
+
+A Typical Trial                                                      168
+
+Why Smithers Resigned                                                186
+
+Exploits of an Irish Reporter                                        197
+
+A Political Lesson Spoiled                                           199
+
+An Orange Oration                                                    205
+
+Frederick’s Folly                                                    215
+
+A Sandy Row Skirmish                                                 232
+
+Hobbies in Our Block                                                 241
+
+Not a John L. Sullivan                                               244
+
+A Windy Day at Cabra                                                 248
+
+Apropos of the Census                                                256
+
+A Mixed Antiquarian                                                  261
+
+Jones’s Umbrella                                                     263
+
+Lessons in the French Drama                                          265
+
+A Commercial Crisis                                                  276
+
+A Musical Revenge                                                    280
+
+A Liar Laid Out                                                      282
+
+
+
+
+AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.
+
+
+    I have knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,
+      Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,
+    Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,
+      And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;
+    Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,
+      Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore--
+    They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul
+      Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.
+
+    Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,
+      Though the roof above its worshippers was low,
+    And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,
+      While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!
+    Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s--by the feet of monarchs trod--
+      With their monumental genius and their lore,
+    Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God
+      Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!
+
+    Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue
+      In accents that we might not understand,
+    But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue
+      As to think his words not heaven’s own command!
+    He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,
+      And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door--
+    In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side--
+      God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.
+
+    There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see
+      Each little modest slab and grassy mound;
+    For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,
+      And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!
+    The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,
+      Desolation was about me, sad and sore,
+    So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,
+      But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!
+
+    I am proud of our cathedrals--they are emblems of our love
+      To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;
+    And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,
+      The devil should not have them as his own!
+    Their splendor has inspired me--but amidst it all I prayed
+      God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,
+    Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade
+      Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD BOREEN.
+
+
+    Embroidered with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,
+      Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,
+    The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,
+      The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;
+    The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,
+      The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.
+    Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,
+      For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!
+
+    It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,
+      Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;
+    It laughed with my joy--in my moments of sadness
+      What solace I found in its pitying shade.
+    When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,
+      My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,
+    What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,
+      So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?
+
+    But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,
+      Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,
+    Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,
+      The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;
+    Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,
+      Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;
+    The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,
+      Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.
+
+    A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,
+      The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,
+    As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,
+      I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;
+    And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor
+      The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,
+    Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,
+      My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.
+
+    Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel
+      With sickness and want I have earned only scars;
+    Life’s twilight is nearing--its day disappearing--
+      My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;
+    But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,
+      Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene
+    Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,
+      The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!
+
+
+
+
+AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.
+
+
+    Upon the rugged ladder rungs--whose pinnacle is Fame--
+    How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;
+    The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,
+    And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.
+    To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise
+    Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;
+    Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,
+    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+    When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen
+    Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,
+    We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,
+    But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;
+    Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store
+    Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.
+    No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill
+    In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+    Perhaps--and yet ’tis hard to think--our boastful modern school
+    Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;
+    Would scorn his simple ways--and in the rapid march of mind
+    His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.
+    No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;
+    He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;
+    To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill
+    Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.
+
+    He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs--
+    Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:
+    We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung
+    Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.
+    In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well
+    That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,
+    And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still
+    All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.
+
+    The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;
+    Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;
+    The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;
+    The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.
+    But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,
+    When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,
+    He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,
+    The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
+
+
+
+
+PAT MURPHY’S COWS.
+
+     [In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary
+     Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to
+     the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited
+     roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat
+     Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less
+     than eleven children.]
+
+
+    In a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,
+    There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;
+    From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,
+    With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.
+    He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,
+    And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;
+    While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse
+    Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole--a pair of Kerry cows.
+
+    Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose
+    The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,
+    Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,
+    And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.
+    And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,
+    For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;
+    In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;
+    He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.
+
+    And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,
+    Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;
+    His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair--
+    The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,
+    Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,
+    Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;
+    And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows
+    Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.
+
+    Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,
+    How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!
+    A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,
+    And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.
+    What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,
+    As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,
+    He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,
+    For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.
+
+    Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan--
+    He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;
+    He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,
+    And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.
+    Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,
+    And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:
+    They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,
+    But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
+
+
+
+
+FATHER TOM MALONE.
+
+A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.
+
+
+    Hair white as innocence, that crowned
+    A gentle face which never frowned;
+    Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;
+    Lips framed to counsel and to bless;
+    Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,
+    A reflex of our native skies,
+    Through which now tears, now sunshine shone--
+    There you have Father Tom Malone.
+
+    He bade the infant at its birth
+    _Cead mille failthe_ to the earth;
+    With friendly hand he guided youth
+    Along the thorny track of truth;
+    The dying felt, yet knew not why,
+    Nearer to Heaven when he was by--
+    For, sure, the angels at God’s throne
+    Were friends of Father Tom Malone.
+
+    For us, poor simple sons of toil
+    Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,
+    Our one ambition, sole content,
+    Not to be backward with the rent;
+    Our one absorbing, constant fear,
+    The agent’s visits twice a year;
+    We had, our hardships to atone,
+    The love of Father Tom Malone.
+
+    One season failed. The dull earth slept.
+    Despite of ceaseless vigil kept
+    For sign of crop, day after day,
+    To coax it from the sullen clay,
+    Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;
+    The tubers rotted--then, oh, shame!
+    We--’twas the last time ever known--
+    Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.
+
+    We had, from fruitful years before,
+    Garnered with care a frugal store;
+    ’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone
+    What were our babes to live upon?
+    We had no seed for coming spring,
+    Nor faintest hope to which to cling;
+    We would have starved without a moan,
+    When out spoke Father Tom Malone.
+
+    His voice, so flute-like in the past,
+    Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,
+    His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,
+    Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!
+    “God’s wondrous love doth not intend
+    Hundreds to starve that one may spend;
+    Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”
+    _That_ from mild Father Tom Malone.
+
+    And when the landlord with a force
+    Of English soldiers, foot and horse,
+    Came down and direst vengeance swore,
+    Who met him at the cabin door?
+    Who reasoned first and then defied
+    The thief in all his power and pride?
+    Who won the poor man’s fight alone?
+    Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.
+
+    So, when you point to heroes’ scars,
+    And boast their prowess in the wars,
+    Give one small meed of praise, at least,
+    To this poor modest Irish priest.
+    No laurel wreath was twined for him,
+    But pulses throb and eyelids dim
+    When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,
+    God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
+
+
+
+
+YOU CAN GUESS.
+
+
+    There are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,
+    And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,
+    And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find
+    Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;
+    But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,
+    Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,
+    There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess
+    I first met my fate,--what it was you can guess.
+
+    It was under the shade of its bordering trees,
+    One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees
+    At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,
+    And yet it was but a short question to ask.
+    ’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless
+    The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”
+    And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;
+    And the question was this--but I’m sure you can guess.
+
+
+
+
+ONLY!
+
+
+    Only a cabin, thatched and gray,
+      Only a rose-twined door,
+    Only a barefooted child at play
+      On only an earthern floor.
+    Only a little brain--not wise
+      For even a head so small,
+    And that is the reason he bitterly cries
+      For leaving his home--that’s all.
+
+    Only the thought of her girlhood there,
+      And her happier days as wife,
+    In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,
+      Have endeared them to her for life;
+    What is the weeping woman’s cause?
+      Why are her accents gall?
+    What does she know of our intricate laws?
+      It was only a hut--that’s all.
+
+    He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,
+      That man with the eyelids dim,
+    And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth
+      For sinewy serfs like him.
+    Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,
+      For his heart such a wondrous thrall?
+    Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?
+      He was born in the place--that’s all.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The years have gone, and the worn-out pair
+      Sleep under the stranger’s clay,
+    And the weeping child with the curly hair
+      Is a brave, strong man to-day;
+    Yet still he thinks of the olden land,
+      And prays for her tyrant’s fall,
+    And longs to be one of some chosen band,
+      With only a chance--that’s all.
+
+
+
+
+SONGS OF INNISFAIL.
+
+
+    Where the Austral river rushes
+    Through feathery heath and bushes,
+    Through its gurgles and its gushes
+        You may hear,
+    To your wonder and surprise,
+    Sweet melodies arise
+    You have heard ’neath other skies
+        Low and clear.
+    Yes! within the gold land,
+    Strange to you and cold land,
+    Voices from the old land
+        Swell upon the gale--
+    Lyrics of the story,
+    Lit with flames of glory,
+    Dimmed with pages gory,
+        Songs of Innisfail!
+
+    Where Mississippi leaping
+    O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping
+    Through valleys fair, is sweeping
+        To the sea,
+    From the fields of nodding grain
+    On some mountain path or plain
+    Rings a stirring old refrain
+        Fresh and free.
+    Yes! where’er we wander
+    Irish hearts will ponder
+    O’er our land, and fonder
+        Throb with ev’ry tale
+    Of the home that bore us,
+    Till the new skies o’er us
+    Echo with our chorus
+        Songs of Innisfail.
+
+    Exiles o’er the spray-foam,
+    Whereso’er we may roam,
+    Thoughts of far-away home
+        Linger still,
+    And in dreams we see again
+    Babbling stream and silent glen,
+    Forest green and lonely fen,
+        Vale and hill.
+    Yes! our hearts’ devotion
+    Flies across the ocean,
+    While with deep emotion
+        Sternest features pale,
+    As around us stealing,
+    Softened by sad feeling,
+    Through the air are pealing
+        Songs of Innisfail!
+
+
+
+
+TAMING A TIGER.
+
+
+We were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,
+Dublin,--five of us--a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.
+
+There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the
+representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay
+amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,
+who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & Brassey; Tim
+Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing
+stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a
+distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical
+jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome
+kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 A.M. train
+south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance
+of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was
+attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid
+individual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally
+irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.
+
+“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the
+newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way
+from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks
+we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would
+ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a
+little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him
+out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of
+the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take
+whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me
+see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick
+Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this
+Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and
+Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each
+of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,
+and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,
+will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he
+must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my
+sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What
+do you say, boys?”
+
+Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand
+in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the
+major into a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed
+rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the
+compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in
+Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping
+Harry,--delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble
+servant).
+
+At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all
+manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished
+off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to
+the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,
+swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had
+pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout
+to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe
+Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,
+and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.
+
+He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!
+the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now
+the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.
+
+He had killed a panther with his naked hands--with one naked hand, in
+fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in
+desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its
+tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s
+spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and
+he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior
+recesses. He tore its heart out, sir,--its heart,--and an assortment of
+lungs and ribs and other things.
+
+He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello
+crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his
+waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He
+never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.
+
+At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,
+and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we
+managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in
+Ireland.
+
+“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that--down
+in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a
+fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled
+twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized
+atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing
+dumb, my name’s not Boomerang--Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”
+
+“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the
+peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,
+for instance.”
+
+“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach
+of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,--flay him alive,
+sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember
+Joe Boomerang--fighting Joe--as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild
+elephants! I would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,
+the--the--by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”
+
+Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,
+and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am
+the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your
+abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally
+concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I
+suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will
+oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an
+officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you
+have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”
+
+We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform
+and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like
+an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but
+his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I
+cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D---- me, if I will!”
+
+“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not
+a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with
+perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for
+you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with
+pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him
+in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the
+bullet? People said, you know, that it was the doctors and not Davitt
+that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.
+
+The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man
+in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man
+already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not
+going to be killed--I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not
+going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as
+if they were snipe.”
+
+“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of
+the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith
+did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting
+Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively
+blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for
+the honor of the service.”
+
+“The service be d----d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a
+kaleidoscope of colors--red, purple, blue, yellow, and white--were
+flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like
+this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a
+different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his
+courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead
+of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had
+ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,
+sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them
+that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance
+from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and
+winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar
+and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;
+and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb
+from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”
+
+Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,
+and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a
+cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.
+I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I
+shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that
+I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you
+must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you
+to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The
+prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had
+disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.
+Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone
+got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed
+to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”
+
+“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,
+he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he
+has always chosen that so far.”
+
+“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such
+horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing
+outright.
+
+“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”
+
+“Has he--has he--I’m not afraid, you know--ha! ha! Joe Boomerang
+afraid--capital joke--but--but--has he killed anybody?”
+
+“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him
+personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,
+matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The
+major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I
+continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both
+pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.
+You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It
+will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,
+but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere
+with my duty.”
+
+“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that--that--”
+
+“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the
+best. I know an undertaker in Cork--a decent sort of a chap. We can
+arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the
+first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills
+you.”
+
+“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me
+sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what
+alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I
+remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major
+managed to get hold of enough of his voice to inquire how it came to
+pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as
+duelling.
+
+“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western
+institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in
+deference to Yankee ideas.”
+
+“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we
+would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang
+of--”
+
+“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the
+car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife
+clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish
+determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter
+collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.
+“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot
+that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and
+glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of
+America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to
+the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m
+bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the
+Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I
+squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the
+blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,
+sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a
+Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the snub-nosed,
+curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.
+Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena
+from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge
+forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that
+seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made
+a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,
+but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.
+
+When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told
+him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,
+having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed
+staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered
+that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for
+his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at
+the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to
+Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.
+
+“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that
+gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to
+Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him
+this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he
+booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’
+thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since
+the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at
+the ould cross roads.” A few days after I read this announcement in the
+Dublin _Gazette_: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the
+humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident
+magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly
+return to Bengal.”
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF KENMARE.
+
+
+    There are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;
+      The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,
+    When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,
+      Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.
+    What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,
+      What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,
+    On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,
+      That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!
+
+    Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning
+      The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,
+    While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,
+      Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,
+    Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow
+      Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;
+    Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,
+      But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!
+
+    When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;
+      When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,
+    For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county
+      Were--the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.
+    And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,
+      Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,
+    The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,
+      Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.
+
+    Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster--
+      This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,
+    Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master--
+      A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!
+    He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;
+      He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer
+    That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges
+      Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!
+
+    He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,
+      Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,
+    But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil
+      Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.
+    Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,
+      The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,
+    And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”
+      Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.
+
+    Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;
+      Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;
+    The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally
+      Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.
+    Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,
+      Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,
+    Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,
+      The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
+
+
+
+
+RYAN’S REVENGE.
+
+
+During the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most
+exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement
+articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the
+post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,
+for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect
+“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This
+peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional
+association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was
+popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been
+introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain
+refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,
+Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the
+government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the
+indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions
+that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,
+subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to adopt his invention when they
+had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the
+_status quo_ was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,
+English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his
+reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office
+pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that
+nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.
+
+The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that
+Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical
+visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence
+in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of
+his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted
+county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a
+Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than
+turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof
+that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.
+So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.
+
+For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to
+get muddled,--his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the
+spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented _billet-doux_ from
+that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue
+envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna
+to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an
+envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes
+being found to contain nothing at all.
+
+Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with
+the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy
+for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent
+sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that
+euphonious cognomen.
+
+Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state
+indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw
+a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You
+couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.
+If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or
+individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was
+a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the
+shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy
+for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress
+suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good
+harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were
+thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of
+as a blight among the Murphys.
+
+So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed
+to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,
+it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,
+the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.
+
+But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central
+bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his
+confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy
+in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the
+fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went
+forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many
+letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could
+put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,--the crops, the
+weather, the price of provisions,--anything, in fact, or nothing at all.
+The language was of minor importance,--Irish, however, preferred,--and
+the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the
+cause.
+
+Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.
+
+The first day of the interception of _the_ Murphy’s letters, three bags
+full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.
+
+The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.
+
+The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s
+private sanctum with spare bags.
+
+The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.
+
+The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy
+letters on the stairs.
+
+Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.
+
+But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking
+Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters
+for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.
+
+Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the
+grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to
+the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or
+hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the
+general chaos.
+
+The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service
+Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were
+blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs
+and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated
+protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for
+Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.
+
+Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War
+Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey
+quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the
+intercepted epistles in.
+
+Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,--the order to
+overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would
+have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the
+task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was
+relieved.
+
+Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy
+correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed
+to the treacherous waves.
+
+To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up
+a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir
+William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a
+week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the
+gout.
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD IRISH TUNE.
+
+
+    We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,
+    And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay
+    By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood
+    A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.
+    Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,
+    And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,
+    When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,
+    There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.
+
+    It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,
+    It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,
+    And over the dreams of the slumberers cast
+    The magical spell of a voice from the past;
+    It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain
+    Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;
+    And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,
+    Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.
+
+    Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,
+    Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,
+    Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,
+    For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.
+    Once again in old homes we were children at play,
+    Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.
+    Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,
+    And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.
+
+    A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,
+    To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,
+    And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,
+    Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;
+    A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,
+    But never a ball on its death-mission sped;
+    Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon
+    Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!
+
+    It linked with its strains ere they melted away
+    True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,
+    But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,
+    To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.
+    The air seemed to throb with invisible tears
+    Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,
+    And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,
+    Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
+
+
+
+
+“HARVEY DUFF.”
+
+
+There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible
+to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the
+different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes
+or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
+“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;
+“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment
+before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
+will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the
+living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself
+a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles
+of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five
+minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because
+he has been killed in the lump.
+
+But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers
+existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is
+none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced
+upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished
+in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican
+convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a
+trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling
+outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but
+if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain
+tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,
+dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,
+hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take
+a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of
+mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will
+amply repay the journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be
+anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well
+to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest
+you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky
+enough to go to hospital.
+
+Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The
+performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.
+
+How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its
+composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated
+with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the
+authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories
+and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.
+
+I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”
+
+There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server
+and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular
+“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled
+in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place
+as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally
+difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the
+melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has
+been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to
+submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied
+experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”
+for thirty seconds.
+
+I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told
+that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,
+returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor
+jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious
+to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time
+to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the
+back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a
+knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the
+harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in
+the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.
+
+In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed
+little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an
+escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,
+and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the
+aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small
+and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle
+something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before
+the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s
+Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and
+bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,
+without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old
+rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen
+might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their
+mouths and their souls in their boots,--that is, if an Irish policeman
+has either a heart or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard
+both along with their civilian clothes.[A]
+
+A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the
+dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic
+entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him
+in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He
+was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer
+was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were
+attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,
+pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man
+aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the
+atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to
+capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.
+Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst
+penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade
+of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that
+strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”
+and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an
+avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told
+Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the
+passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the
+ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,
+twirling and twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon
+the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the
+atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when
+the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the
+crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering
+at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he
+could recover his breath.
+
+I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its
+obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the
+ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and
+it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines
+to that immaculate body:--
+
+
+“HARVEY DUFF.”
+
+    My load of woes is hard to bear,
+    I’m losing flesh with dark despair,
+    And the top of my head is so awfully bare
+    It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.
+    Would you the cause be after knowing
+    That makes me the baldest peeler going,
+    That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?
+    ’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        If I’ve not heard you often enough,
+        May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,
+        And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+    I was once with a bailiff serving writs,
+    My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,
+    For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,
+    And the mob malafoostered me for him.
+    But the case that circles my brain is thick,
+    It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,
+    And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough
+    Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,
+        My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff
+        Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”
+
+    When duty has called me miles away,
+    Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,
+    And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex
+    Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.
+    I couldn’t coax dry bread and water
+    From father or son, from mother or daughter,
+    But I always could reckon on more than enough
+    Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        Of you I get more than _quantum suff_,
+        And would to the Lord I could collar the muff
+        Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”
+
+    I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care
+    To go alone to rebel Clare,
+    And with a reckless spirit dare
+    To take a farm that’s vacant there.
+    I know the peasants bold would scatter
+    My four bones to the wind--no matter;
+    They’d wake me decent--no heart so tough
+    As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”
+
+        Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”
+        I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,
+        As I think that my soul will depart in a huff
+        To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”
+
+
+
+
+A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.
+
+
+We learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and
+Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy
+has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have
+been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot
+of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged
+Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly
+thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts
+on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at
+present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:--
+
+There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and
+happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.
+
+I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings
+in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never
+did anything so low or ignoble as to _work_ for their country, and are,
+consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big
+pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the
+refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by
+jingo when we do!”
+
+On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and
+unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the
+heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty
+miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing
+triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the
+Milky Way.
+
+Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of
+an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few
+front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.
+
+I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty
+feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous
+juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving
+that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t
+have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of
+Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to
+either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been
+organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a
+National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through
+my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.
+
+But it is strange how the misfortunes of others reconcile us to our
+own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my
+soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw
+approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair
+Araminta Higgins.
+
+They were mashing.
+
+He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,
+preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his
+suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,
+and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.
+
+“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true
+to thee as--as--as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.
+I am thine--thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”
+
+At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet
+and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward
+a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane
+observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he
+supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish
+blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a
+coarse laugh.
+
+They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign
+spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two
+prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the
+direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were
+energetically discussing the National League campaign in Ulster. They
+neared the precipice--I mean the slide.
+
+“This Parnellite invasion will fail--utterly fail--if we remain firm,”
+said the taller of the two, Col. K--H--. “Unity and perseverance must be
+our watchwords. United we stand--”
+
+He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head
+rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his
+desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the
+soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted
+energies.
+
+The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known
+attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to
+discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.
+looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in
+every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were
+veritable embodiments of _fieri-facias_; his stiff, angular collar had
+the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he
+carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and
+processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping
+briskly to destruction.
+
+Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a
+bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.
+
+They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that
+atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.
+
+Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal
+documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored
+ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got
+home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking
+for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a
+bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was
+filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.
+
+When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was
+continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the
+North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his
+reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done
+the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”
+
+And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was
+brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the
+policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault
+over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly
+round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the
+policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had
+got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had
+been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and
+constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.
+
+But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we
+going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls
+and chasms to be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,
+and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?
+It’s awful!
+
+
+
+
+IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.
+
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
+      Of the Army of the Danube, is a private--nothing more;
+    And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision
+      On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.
+    He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,
+      And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;
+    So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding
+      Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.
+    But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,
+      Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;
+    And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,
+      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted--
+      His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place--
+    And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,
+      No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.
+    It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,
+      When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,
+    When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,
+      And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.
+    There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village
+      (So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),
+    When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,
+      “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
+
+    Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
+      Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,
+    For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion
+      He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.
+    In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,
+      By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,
+    And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory
+      Of dying for his country to be happy or content.
+    He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,
+      And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,
+    While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,
+      Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPEROR’S RING.
+
+
+    The stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,
+      The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;
+    The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;
+      Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;
+    When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder
+      Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,
+    Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,
+      The sentinel checks his monotonous round.
+    Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber
+      With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,
+    For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,
+      The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    Fresh horse and new pistols--some phrases of warning,
+      Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,
+    And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning
+      Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.
+    Out, out through the forests--on, on o’er the meadows,
+      While castle and cabin and hamlet and town
+    Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.
+      With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,
+    The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;
+      To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;
+    And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver
+      The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,
+      All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;
+    And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;
+      Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,
+    For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,
+      Nor ocean a sheltering island so far
+    As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,
+      Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.
+    So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker
+      Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.
+    Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor
+      Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.
+
+    We Russians are brave, but we only are human;
+      We cower at a power it is death to offend,
+    Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman
+      From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.
+    The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;
+      Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;
+    The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder
+      Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.
+    Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,
+      These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.
+    And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only
+      A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK LORIS.
+
+
+    Spurs jingle and lances shine;
+    A hundred brave horsemen in line;
+      Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,
+    For why should true hearts repine?
+    The pathway is level and balmy the air,
+    Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;
+    The sun has but reached its meridian height,
+    “Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”
+    When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,
+    Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;
+    In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,
+    And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.
+    But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,
+    With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,
+        Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!
+
+    Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!
+    Ten heroes fight back to back,
+      And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust
+    A wolf from the howling pack.
+    How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!
+    Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,
+    They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,
+    Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.
+    The ten are scattered; they seem to be
+    Like derelict spars in an angry sea.
+    But never a Cossack was known to yield
+    While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.
+    Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,
+    The waves are engulphing them one by one!
+        But two remain back to back!
+
+    His comrade sinks down with a groan--
+    Black Loris is fighting alone,
+      His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,
+    And his arms as heavy as stone.
+    “Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,
+    For answer he sabres the chief of the band.
+    But his arm is shivered in twain--he feels
+    The earth swim round him--he gasps, he reels,
+    And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,
+    As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar--
+    Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?
+    No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!
+        Black Loris is not alone!
+
+    No tears for the ninety-nine,
+    The nation’s heart is their shrine;
+      But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise
+    For the one man left of the line!
+    The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,
+    And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,
+    The strength and glory of Russia depart,
+    And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,
+    Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell
+    Of dashing Loris who fought so well,
+    Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,
+    Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.
+    And for years to come, when trotting along
+    Ural and Don, men will sing this song--
+        “The One and the Ninety-Nine!”
+
+
+
+
+WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?
+
+
+I.
+
+Mr. Phineas Phlynn, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish
+estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic
+nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous
+functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and
+less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by
+his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the
+abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to
+his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his
+neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy
+man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was
+only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed
+property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits
+included an addiction to French wines and Irish whiskey, a decided
+inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures
+at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into
+frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger
+percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.
+
+But how was it to be done?
+
+He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry
+had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in
+mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and
+the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land
+League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master
+about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he
+described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his
+gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious
+bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks
+deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But
+the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.
+Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a
+repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have
+their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console
+Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his
+fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t
+enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant
+degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent
+to guess that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal
+forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a
+crisis. There should be an outrage--a sanguinary, blood-curdling
+outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent
+carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least
+eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual
+peril.
+
+
+II.
+
+There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion
+of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself--at least, he shot his
+own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this
+horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact
+that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s
+hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was
+in it or not--really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so
+tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly
+inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such
+objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat
+on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police
+barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and
+the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his
+dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his
+revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence
+of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforementioned, and poured
+into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of
+his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had
+fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his
+head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!
+
+
+III.
+
+The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country
+was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The
+revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.
+The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the
+government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized
+community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages
+of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information
+that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an
+exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively
+kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes--a feat
+unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir
+and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown
+had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For
+nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it
+was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their
+emotions.
+
+All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence
+given to him as the employer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,
+that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to
+get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would
+become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition
+permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his
+outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London
+detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the
+event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,
+Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,
+Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine
+bargains, left London for Leitrim.
+
+In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with
+the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of
+the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same
+neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.
+
+
+IV.
+
+In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he
+could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work
+of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.
+
+About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident
+that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because
+every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been
+arrested, and established their innocence. The foreigner who had failed
+would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents
+loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.
+
+It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced
+that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking
+measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector
+Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest
+both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names
+of Jones and Brennan.
+
+
+V.
+
+Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.
+
+“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at
+you.”
+
+“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong
+reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.
+
+“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”
+
+“Where is he?” queried Phineas.
+
+“Here.”
+
+“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for
+revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,
+when, why, how--”
+
+“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am
+Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been
+commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business. I’ve fished. I
+may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant
+for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and
+whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and
+at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police
+there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve
+trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare--I have him,
+I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”
+
+Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins
+departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the
+unconscious Crawley.
+
+
+VI.
+
+“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant
+for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas
+Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no
+time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant
+Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in
+accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in
+Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and
+about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of
+Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a
+tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,
+too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.
+If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”
+
+“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head
+Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the
+Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,
+if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I
+whistled for them.”
+
+It was so arranged.
+
+Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,
+describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three
+official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened
+and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep
+consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to
+himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding
+the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand
+and the warrant fluttering in his left.
+
+“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he
+ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at
+him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables
+grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a
+racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip
+off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and
+depositing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a
+shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire
+with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to
+receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by
+Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was
+carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells
+and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers
+charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they
+splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred
+skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the
+hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned
+each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms
+and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their
+Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.
+Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among
+the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the
+entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal
+production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully
+unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian
+crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s
+hat.
+
+
+
+
+THE RED-HEART DAISY.
+
+A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.
+
+
+    The clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;
+        The storm of wrath
+    Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,
+        And in its path
+    Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces
+    In quivering bodies and distorted faces.
+
+    Among the bloody drift of dead and dying
+        That strewed the ground,
+    A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,
+        The searchers found.
+    Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,
+    Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.
+
+    Some essence from the forms interred together
+        Enriched the clay,
+    And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather
+        ’Neath which they lay--
+    Rough hide and dainty skin--deep brain and hollow--
+    Silver and iron--Vulcan and Apollo.
+
+    And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled
+        The mountain’s crest,
+    Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled
+        Among the rest,
+    Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory
+    Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Those who would make our land a frame of metal,
+        With jewelled heart,
+    Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal
+        As thing apart
+    From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,
+    Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.
+
+
+
+
+THE TIDE IS TURNING.
+
+
+    So, masters who have ruled so long
+      With cruel rods of iron,
+    Who sought with gyves and fetters strong
+      Our freedom to environ,
+    In plenitude of sullen power
+      Our tearful pleadings spurning:
+    Prepare ye for your fated hour,
+      Beware--the tide is turning!
+          Yes! yes! at last we fling the past
+            With all its woes behind us,
+          And stand to-day in firm array
+            Against the bonds that bind us.
+
+    With brutal grip of tyrant hand
+      Ye choked our aspirations,
+    And made our fertile motherland
+      The Niobe of nations;
+    To feed the vices of your lords,
+      Ye stole the people’s earning,
+    And held the theft with hireling swords--
+      But now the tide is turning!
+          Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway
+            Is tottering to ruin,
+          The Irish race a future face
+            That will not harbor you in!
+
+    Ye kept us chained to ignorance,
+      In fear that education
+    Might teach our brains the wisest chance
+      To liberate the nation.
+    But, spite of all your guile and thrall,
+      Our people still are learning
+    What most will tend your yoke to rend,
+      And so the tide is turning.
+          Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,
+            Each rusty chain is breaking;
+          The portents smile upon our isle,
+            For Ireland is awaking.
+
+    From meadows rich of smooth Kildare
+      To frowning crags of Kerry,
+    From ocean-girdled shores of Clare
+      To busy marts of Derry,
+    In our opprest, north, south, east, west,
+      A newer spirit’s burning--
+    The conquering fire of brave desire,
+      That tells the tide is turning.
+          Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark
+            The light at last is blazing,
+          Till on our brow no serf-brand now
+            Can chill a friendly gazing.
+
+
+
+
+OUR OWN AGAIN.
+
+
+    The voice of freedom’s sounding
+      From farthest shore to shore;
+    And Erin’s pulse is bounding
+      With manhood’s blood once more;
+    Our sluggard trance is broken,
+      We stand erect as men,
+    Our stern demand is spoken,
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    No futile bribes can stay us,
+      No traitor chiefs control,
+    No wheedling tones delay us,
+      No terrors blanch our soul.
+    The gloomy hour has vanished
+      And gone forever when
+    We could be crushed or banished--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    The bluster of the Tories,
+      And Whigdom’s tempting lies,
+    Are vain and foolish stories
+      We spurn and we despise.
+    We’ve torn the landlord foeman
+      From out his reeking den,
+    And now we’ll halt for no man--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+    Our eyes are lifted sunward,
+      No power can bar our course,
+    Our march must still be onward,
+      Spite either guile or force;
+    And be it by the sabre,
+      The voice, the vote, or pen,
+    Or steadfast, patient labor--
+      We’ll have our own again!
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF A TAIL.
+
+
+    There’s a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,
+    Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;
+    Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,
+    For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;
+    ’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July
+    Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;
+    And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,
+    That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.
+
+    Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,
+    Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,
+    And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon
+    Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.
+    And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,
+    He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,
+    Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,
+    Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.
+
+    ’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round
+    Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,
+    And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,
+    In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;
+    And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,
+    The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,
+    But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,
+    For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.
+
+    When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,
+    She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;
+    And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,
+    With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.
+    Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind
+    That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.
+    Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,
+    That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.
+
+    Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,
+    And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,
+    Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then
+    That the time for speech was past--the knife was mightier than the pen.
+    They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,
+    And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,
+    To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,
+    But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.
+
+    When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone
+    Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.
+    The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,
+    As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.
+    Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,
+    But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,
+    That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,
+    And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.
+
+    And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,
+    Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;
+    She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)
+    Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;
+    And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,
+    And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,
+    That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,
+    Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.
+
+    And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,
+    That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;
+    And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her
+    Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.”
+    Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,
+    The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;
+    They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,
+    Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.
+
+     [In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during
+     the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of
+     the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on
+     the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,
+     in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island
+     was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for
+     over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land
+     Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?
+     Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.
+     The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible
+     to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses
+     record the exploit:]
+
+
+    There were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,
+    With due responsibility on each official breast,
+    To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent
+    To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.
+    Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,
+    It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,
+    Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,
+    For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.
+
+    They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults
+    As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,
+    And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,
+    They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.
+    The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,
+    Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,
+    They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact
+    That their unexpected _dejeuner_ was owing to the Act.
+
+    They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,
+    There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,
+    And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,
+    They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,
+    And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport
+    That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;
+    They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked
+    The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.
+
+    They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay
+    While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,
+    Although alternate intervals were taken to allow
+    Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.
+    That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal
+    A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;
+    And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,
+    They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.
+
+
+
+
+CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.
+
+
+    So, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!
+      An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,
+    Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do
+      Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?
+    All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’
+      An’ existence will become a dreary void;
+    Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;
+      Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke
+      Shall we revel in our customary fun
+    Of scaring all the humble women folk
+      In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.
+    There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,
+      An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;
+    We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected
+      To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,
+      ’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,
+    An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire--
+      We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,
+    The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,
+      An’ life by common people be enjoyed,
+    In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint
+      That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!
+
+    Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.
+      But we didn’t think you positively cruel
+    Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,
+      And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.
+    Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,
+      Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,
+    We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’
+      Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!
+
+
+
+
+CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.
+
+(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)
+
+
+    I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,
+      For struggling poor sowls like myself,
+    To brighten our dreary existence,
+      An’ even to gather some pelf,
+    In a land where the soil is but waitin’
+      The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks
+    That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’
+      To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried
+      Away from the strings of my life--
+    From the spot where my mother lies buried,
+      The place where I coorted my wife.
+    Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,
+      My conscience remorsefully pricks--
+    I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,
+      Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,
+      When my luck like a stranger goes by,
+    When blight settles down on the praties,
+      An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;
+    Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,
+      An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,
+    I curse you, misfortune so cruel,
+      An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,
+      Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;
+    Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,
+      An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,
+    Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,
+      An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks--
+    Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’
+      That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    And often at night I’ve a notion,
+      Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,
+    In that plintiful land o’er the ocean
+      They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;
+    They might even an odd pat of butther
+      Along with their stirabout mix;
+    Oh, my heart is too full for to utter
+      Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.
+
+    To see the health-roses assimble
+      On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls
+    Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble
+      With the innocent laugh of my girls;
+    An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,
+      Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.
+    Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy
+      Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.
+
+
+
+
+JENKINS, M. P.
+
+
+    Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er
+    To address the electors he’d soothered before,
+    But he found in their feelings toward him a change,
+    Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;
+    He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south
+    When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,
+    And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,
+    For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;
+    Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”
+    A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;
+    “I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.”
+    They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,
+    “The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”
+    He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,
+    “For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;
+    He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,
+    And as it was freezing it needn’t be told
+    That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.
+    And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind--
+    Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,
+    And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,
+    “I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.
+
+    He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,
+    Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.
+    “Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,
+    “Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”
+    All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;
+    “I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.
+    ’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;
+    I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.
+
+
+
+
+THADY MALONE.
+
+
+    Hurrah for our tight little, bright little nation,
+      The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;
+    The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,
+      Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.
+              Were once we united
+              Our wrongs should be righted
+    And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,
+              But still some intraygur,
+              Or bastely renayger,
+    Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.
+              Yet, no matter, we’ve planned
+              A divarsion so grand
+    That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;
+              And the rogue who’ll consent
+              To contribute rack rint
+    Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!
+
+    The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,
+      The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,
+    An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,
+      The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,
+              For his wife wint away
+              On the very next day
+    With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),
+              An’ sisters and cousins
+              Departed in dozens,
+    Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.
+              Why, sorra a doubt,
+              Sure, the fire it wint out
+    An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,
+              Till he felt that the rint
+              Had been badly ill-spint
+    That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!
+
+    The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,
+      The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,
+    In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,
+      An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.
+              The sparrows, diminted,
+              Grew quite discontinted,
+    An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;
+              The pigs tuk to fittin’,
+              An’ hins that were sittin’
+    Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.
+              A polis inspector,
+              A taxes collector,
+    Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,
+              An’ there now he’s stuck,
+              Without hope, grace, or luck,
+    Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!
+
+
+
+[B] RORY’S REVERIE.
+
+
+    Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand
+    To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,
+    To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,
+    To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.
+    ’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,
+    Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;
+    My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,
+    Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!
+
+    How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,
+    Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,
+    Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,
+    Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!
+    An’ they must know--the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,
+    That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.
+    Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight--
+    I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!
+
+    Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,--
+    (“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging
+          hotly round),--
+    And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face
+    Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.
+    She kissed me ere she sank to rest--I’d think it sin just now
+    To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;
+    Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight--
+    I mustn’t think of this--No! no! for Rory walks to-night!
+
+    Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,
+    I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.
+    The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long--
+    Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.
+    And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,
+    When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,
+    An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,
+    An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”
+
+    And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;
+    If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;
+    My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;
+    My child--but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!
+    She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when
+    She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:
+    Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,
+    To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!
+
+    What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer
+    For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;
+    I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,
+    No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!
+    I’m shakin’ like an aspen--Faugh! I can’t afford to spend
+    My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end--
+    What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,
+    I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE SURPRISE.
+
+
+I.
+
+GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.
+
+Constable Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the
+Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail
+to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable
+Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was
+tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,
+and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution
+which has deprived the Irish constabulary of all the ordinary feelings
+of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a
+riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a
+recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was
+born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was
+evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in
+dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested
+suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar
+to his code of instructions and mode of training--these were mysteries
+known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The
+physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own
+limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry
+McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the
+metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the
+somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in
+the parish who disputed unpopularity with him--George Macgrabb, J. P.,
+the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of
+its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles
+around.
+
+Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two
+despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral--or
+immoral--characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the
+recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to
+the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,
+that the chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question
+about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,
+which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to
+direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were
+supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save
+Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police
+were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the
+constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.
+Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his
+magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest
+in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he
+had sent to Gallagher a goose.
+
+“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate
+feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to
+rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.
+Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your
+comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”
+
+Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and
+miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,
+or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the
+gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship
+are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried
+to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of
+a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of half-a-dozen
+agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make
+his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But
+the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The
+compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin _Farmer’s Gazette_ recommended
+boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his
+own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged
+Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.
+The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he
+could recover from this outrage to his judgment.
+
+The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the _Barndoor
+Chronicle_ gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert
+Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of
+edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight
+spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.
+He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the
+kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in
+Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and
+culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be
+fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,
+half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official _Gazette_, tunic
+buttons, bayonet sheaths--anything, everything, except flesh-forming
+food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private
+circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,
+search-warrants, copies of information, it swallowed with an avidity
+that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.
+
+I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a
+knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that
+wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be
+necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that
+transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.
+
+
+II.
+
+A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.
+
+The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable
+Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.
+They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,
+and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant
+farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated
+Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,
+madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never
+doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and
+propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British
+justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary
+joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and
+your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who
+is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great
+measure to his powers of mimicry, and the fact that Macgrabb and
+Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At
+weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again
+and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the
+magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the
+greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried
+in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would
+have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s
+charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at
+finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue
+and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous
+countenance.
+
+As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s
+father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the
+parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either
+the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the
+sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not
+account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a
+two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and
+in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb
+could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s
+Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less
+expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,
+guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to
+contribute, but he could and did express his opinion of the
+rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis
+was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of
+the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within
+measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s
+collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had
+begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the
+universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left
+McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his
+difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered
+the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.
+
+I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This
+reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.
+Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,
+frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the
+opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of
+his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in
+his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the
+fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a
+devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he
+couldn’t quite understand it himself.
+
+It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly
+disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical
+susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and
+Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and
+with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a
+knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical
+studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a
+grass plot, and out into the high road.
+
+It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose
+of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the
+peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.
+
+“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand
+familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper
+escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch
+McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”
+
+“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.
+
+“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been
+engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents
+are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and
+you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents--you’re not
+supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t
+nab that rent receipt--you’ll know it--it’s on blue, thick paper--what
+harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police
+authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing
+else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down
+for you, and the chance, Tom--think of that, my boy--the chance of
+having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood
+out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party
+last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you
+think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,
+gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till
+the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with
+delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”
+
+“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers
+and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a
+rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies
+of the _Irish World_, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,
+even if I lose my stripes.”
+
+On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a
+loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the
+summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and
+Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.
+
+“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he
+yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my
+oath--I mane this sarch-warrant--I demand any arms, ammunition,
+traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”
+
+McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to
+his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,
+“Arrah! Sergeant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of
+these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,
+yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have
+such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”
+
+The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his
+followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or
+scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,
+and the merciless jeering of the young student.
+
+On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.
+If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there
+is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”
+
+That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat
+down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the
+search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged
+in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the
+table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring
+in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened
+by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and
+perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was
+the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the
+omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers
+strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,
+but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and
+disappeared from view.
+
+
+III.
+
+A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+About noon the constable received the following note:--
+
+     _Sir_,--Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your
+     grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for
+     £24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George
+     Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take
+     legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your
+     punishment. Yours, etc., PATRICK MCCARTHY.
+
+The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:--
+
+     MR. MCCARTHY:
+
+     _Sir_,--I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to
+     the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few
+     suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin
+     Castle.
+
+                                               Yours, THOMAS GALLAGHER,
+                                                  _Constable, R. I. C._
+
+
+
+The second note was less short, but more mysterious:--
+
+     MR. MACGRABB:
+
+     _Respected Sir_,--That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying
+     out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.
+     Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has
+     one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its
+     stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it won’t digest a
+     piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill
+     the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful
+
+                                                      THOMAS GALLAGHER.
+
+
+
+The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives
+from Macgrabb:--
+
+                                               THE LODGE, Dec. 7, 1880.
+
+     _My dear Mr. McCarthy_,--I find on looking over the office books
+     that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.
+     His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his
+     father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,
+     and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I
+     would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of
+     course you know the consequences of delay.
+
+     Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                       GEORGE MACGRABB.
+
+     _Dear Constable_,--Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to
+     drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.
+
+                                                                GEORGE.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.
+
+To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his
+note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its
+literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,
+for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more
+for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat
+annoyed, even if it did not alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was
+a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have
+killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost
+receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive
+interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the
+missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated
+blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document
+obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to
+breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the
+barracks of its treasure.
+
+On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the
+fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after
+Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent
+to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment
+against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the
+said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why
+such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious
+tenant.
+
+On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.
+
+“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day
+or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from
+McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was
+stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the
+_Irish World_ found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the
+bench against him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We
+landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G--d, I’ll
+put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll
+be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have
+every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other
+rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them
+down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more
+men.”
+
+“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a
+vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,
+didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains
+of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a
+fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save
+young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?
+He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then
+look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.
+Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind--”
+
+The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating
+and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a
+hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the
+hamper was attached a card:--
+
+“A Christmas Box--From Harry McCarthy.”
+
+“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,
+with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from
+the box a “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher
+and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the
+goose!”
+
+They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,
+as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as
+ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the
+law.
+
+The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time
+before he could read its contents:--
+
+     _My poor Gallagher_,--I do not wish to deprive you of your
+     Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
+     collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
+     last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
+     has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
+     exploring turn of mind that I admire--though certainly it is the
+     most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
+     confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
+     well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
+     employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
+     digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
+     and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
+     to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
+     discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
+     valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
+     has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
+     blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
+     hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
+     better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
+     your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
+     discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
+     mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
+     treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
+     which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
+     time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
+     exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
+     interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
+     author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
+     in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
+     ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
+     strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
+     would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
+     dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
+     both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,
+
+                                                        Yours, as ever,
+                                                        HARRY MCCARTHY.
+
+     P. S.--I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
+     which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
+     you tickets?
+
+They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after
+they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply
+for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the
+whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the
+greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot
+say which was the greater surprise--that which he felt when he
+encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he
+got it back again.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.
+
+
+    Brightly our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,
+      Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;
+    Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;
+      Firm is each footstep, erect every head.
+    Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,
+      Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;
+    Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry
+      Wakens the nation--Our land shall be free!
+
+    We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining
+      In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,
+    And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,
+      For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!
+    What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;
+      Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;
+    On to the contest, then, up with the green again!
+      Death to the tyrant--Our land shall be free!
+
+    The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,
+      The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;
+    Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;
+      While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!
+    Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,
+      But now she rises erect from her knee,
+    And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,
+      Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!
+
+    England no longer can mock or deride us;
+      Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;
+    Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;
+      True to the cause we shall ever remain.
+    Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;
+      Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;
+    Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,
+      Soldiers, press onward--Our land shall be free!
+
+
+
+
+PHILIPSON’S PARTY.
+
+
+Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson
+Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived
+in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the
+express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,
+which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out
+of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had
+allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three
+years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle
+manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease--with a
+view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all
+round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to
+view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was
+regarded by Old Soapsuds,--which was the very irreverend title those
+benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the
+city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime
+of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the
+tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table
+had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest
+bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson
+had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it
+would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no
+effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and
+calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict
+Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest
+of the tenants.
+
+At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going
+agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,
+ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of
+landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the
+entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put
+down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was
+smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of
+any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally
+workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked
+fifty--fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to
+beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was
+what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had
+Peter Philipson--“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.
+
+The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained
+the old housekeeper and the cook and the coachman and a stable boy,
+only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas
+Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the
+evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of
+the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first
+proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the
+neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his
+next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as
+a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he
+expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the
+recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.
+These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate
+missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,
+including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under
+penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon
+his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his
+father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle
+to the _Limehouse Chronicle_ on the proper method of settling the Irish
+difficulty.
+
+On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his
+tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay
+up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected
+so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the
+farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men
+who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them
+retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say
+that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be
+a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,
+and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,
+he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got
+round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest
+without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”
+
+“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an
+ill-disguised sneer.
+
+Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the
+wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the
+twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.
+
+“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, we’re here to bring _you_ to _your_ senses; not to show that
+we’ve parted with our own.”
+
+“I--I--” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t
+understand you.”
+
+“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for
+arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to
+raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long
+as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint
+too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man, to offer you a fair rint for
+this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t
+like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to
+the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”
+
+Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was
+nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he
+did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is
+mo--mo--monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in
+every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll
+evict--I’ll-I’ll--by Jove! I’ll--I’ll--Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of
+this!”
+
+“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like
+to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve
+only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,
+begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man
+to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,
+thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.
+Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts
+of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own
+fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t
+neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word
+of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A
+thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the
+deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest
+chair with a dim conviction surging through his brain that there was
+something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,
+Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than
+Ballymurphy, County Cork.
+
+After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things
+were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the
+decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about
+that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so
+how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with
+him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived
+spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was
+interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man
+Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which
+at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.
+
+“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.
+
+“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,
+she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the
+’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the
+front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe
+there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,
+’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’
+mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a
+hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with
+the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve
+come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey--I mean
+to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham--I
+didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as
+much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for
+Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of
+hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful
+Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”
+
+Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed
+sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest
+railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the
+distance he could place before nightfall between himself and
+Ballymurphy.
+
+A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had
+spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires
+were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision
+store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig
+he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his
+equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter
+groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited
+guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.
+Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring
+squires from half a dozen estates--a goodly company of fifteen or
+sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their
+wants, and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple
+of loaves to feast their appetites!
+
+It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the
+burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman
+in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the
+whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial
+in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking
+examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he
+would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?
+Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing
+his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where
+boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and
+housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he
+poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?
+
+He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.
+With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove
+the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to
+his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He
+restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the
+stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The
+party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it
+was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.
+
+If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a
+soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into the counting-house of
+Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his
+candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned
+to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be
+firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on
+the subject.
+
+
+
+
+THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.
+
+
+    Fill up once more, we’ll drink a toast
+      To comrades far away;
+    No nation on the earth can boast
+      Of braver hearts than they.
+    And though they sleep in dungeons deep,
+      Or flee, outlawed and banned,
+    We love them yet, we ne’er forget
+      The felons of our land!
+
+    In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,
+      Foredoomed by alien laws,
+    Some on the scaffold proudly died
+      For holy Ireland’s cause.
+    And brothers, say, shall we to-day
+      Unmoved like cowards stand,
+    While traitors shame and foes defame
+      The felons of our land?
+
+    Some in the convict’s dreary cell
+      Have found a living tomb,
+    And some unseen, unfriended, fell
+      Within its silent gloom.
+    Yet what care we, although it be
+      Trod by a ruffian band,
+    God bless the clay where rest to-day
+      The felons of our land!
+
+    Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,
+      Oh, little do we care,
+    A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown
+      An Irish head can wear!
+    And every Gael in Innisfail
+      Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,
+    From Lee to Boyne would gladly join
+      The felons of our land!
+
+
+
+
+AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.
+
+
+    The wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,
+    In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;
+      And as he contemplated the interminable rain,
+      On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,
+    For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.
+
+    The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,
+    And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,
+      As he thought of bronchial attacks,
+      Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,
+    And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.
+
+    The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,
+    The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil
+      Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,
+      O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,
+    And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.
+
+    His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,
+    And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,
+      His gloomy face relaxed,--indeed, he actually laughed;
+      He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught
+    That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.
+
+    He whispered to the jarvey--“You remember Murphy’s land;
+    Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?
+      That is, could you perambulate
+      Around that gentleman’s estate
+    In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?
+
+    “You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,
+    But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,
+      Return the muddy boots to me
+      Unbrushed, because I wish to be
+    Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.”
+
+    That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,
+    He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,
+      He simply mopped the boots around
+      The dirtiest adjacent ground,
+    And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.
+
+    And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent
+    Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,
+    Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,
+      Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure
+      That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,
+    That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.
+
+
+
+
+A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.
+
+
+    I’m diminted,--this is awful; so it is
+      My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;
+    ’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz
+      The time I lost my churning through the thunder.
+    Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,
+      An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary--
+    Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!--
+      Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.
+
+    I wouldn’t mind the ould man,--not a jot;
+      I always looked upon him as a blaggard,
+    Since his language was so disperately hot,
+     Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.
+    They might pass their resolutions by the score
+      About him, and I would niver prove contrary,
+    But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore
+      Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.
+
+    Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,
+      Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;
+    An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,
+      Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.
+    Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;
+      They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,
+    An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,--
+      Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.
+
+    If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,
+      Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,
+    Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,
+      An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,
+    I would do my best endayvors to obey;
+      But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy
+    Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,--
+      Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!
+
+
+
+
+A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.
+
+
+    O Peggy, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,
+    And help me to recover from my state of discontint;
+    There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,
+    And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.
+            For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,
+            By the light of that same silver moon,
+                  Found out of his bed,
+                  But will straightway be led
+                  To a cushion of plank,
+                  That of feathers is blank,
+            An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.
+
+    Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,
+    With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;
+    Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant
+    Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;
+            An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste
+            For resting his arm round your waist,
+                An’ except for a sigh,
+                Or a glance of your eye,
+                Or an odd little squeeze
+                That there’s nobody sees,
+            His comfort will be of the laste.
+
+    Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,
+    Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?
+    I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,
+    I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;
+            I despised my five miles of a thramp
+            In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,
+                For I knew at its ind
+                I could always dipind
+                That some one I’d find
+                Who had sootherings kind,
+            To rescue my sperits from damp.
+
+    But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,
+    The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;
+    And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,
+    I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.
+            An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,
+            Stritched out on an ould cabin door,
+                With six ounces of lead
+                Settled inside my head,
+                An’ my bosom, that’s true
+                As the saints unto you,
+            Disarranged by an ounce or two more.
+
+    Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,
+    Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;
+    And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,
+    That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;
+            So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,
+            And the law has such far-seeing eyes,
+                ’Twould find thim all out,
+                And there isn’t a doubt
+                Introduced I would be,
+                By some dirty J. P.,
+            To a suit of the Government frieze.
+
+
+
+
+O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.
+
+BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.
+
+
+    Gallant sons of Innisfail,
+    Ye whose stout hearts never quail,
+    Though no glittering coats of mail
+        Their proud throbbings hide:
+    Hark! yon distant sullen hum!
+    ’Tis the rolling of the drum.
+    See! our Saxon foemen come
+        In their wrath and pride.
+
+    Meet them, comrades, face to face,
+    Meet them as becomes our race,
+    Let no shadow of disgrace
+        Dim our spotless name.
+    Front to front, unshrinking, stand,
+    Fire each heart and nerve each hand,
+    Strike for God and fatherland,
+        Liberty and fame!
+
+    Kinsmen, they are still the same
+    As when, centuries past, they came
+    To our shores, and blood and flame
+        Followed in their track;
+    By the still uncancelled debt
+    We were cowards to forget,
+    By the wrongs we suffer yet,
+        Drive them headlong back!
+
+    As when angry billows leap,
+    Like proud chargers from the deep,
+    Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep
+        All their wrath to spray,
+    So their glinting waves of steel
+    Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel
+    Till their serried columns reel,
+        Scattered in dismay.
+
+    Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be
+    Still unconquered, proud, and free;
+    Strike, and fear not,--victory
+        Waits on every blow;
+    Strike, that we may never roam
+    Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;
+    Strike together, and strike home,
+        Vengeance on the foe!
+
+
+
+
+THE FENIAN’S DREAM.
+
+CHRISTMAS, 1867.
+
+
+    Through London’s dull and murky air
+      The merry Christmas bells
+    Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,
+      Their sonorous throbs and swells.
+    To the half-slumbering town they spoke
+      Of peace and God’s good-will,
+    And seemed to chase with pealing stroke
+      The fiends of hate and ill;
+    But, ah, how cruelly they broke
+      Around dark Pentonville!
+
+    There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,
+      Half timid, forced their way,
+    And fell in slender, silvery streams,
+      Down where the convict lay.
+    They glanced a moment round the place,
+      Cold, comfortless, and bare,
+    Then, in a pitying embrace,
+      Like angel spirits there,
+    Caressed the careworn, pallid face,
+      So wan, and yet so fair.
+
+    They seemed to whisper softly while
+      Around his head they strayed,
+    For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,
+      Half joy, half anguish, played;
+    As if the tender moonbeams sought
+      Bright tales of hope to tell,
+    And the day memories, bitter, wrought
+      Such fancies to dispel;
+    And so his two dream guardians fought
+      Within his lonely cell.
+
+    His dream was of the loved old land
+      He never could forget--
+    The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,
+      Had not subdued it yet;
+    The land of legend and of lay,
+      Of mountain, stream, and lake,
+    Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,
+      Of forest, glen, and brake,
+    Where highland sprite and lowland fay
+      A home forever make.
+
+    The land whose children toil and bleed,
+      And drudge and starve in vain,
+    For where the peasant sows the seed,
+      A stranger reaps the grain.
+    The Isle of Saints--where knaves and spies
+      Flourish and thrive apace;
+    Where fortune must be wooed by lies,
+      Dishonor, and disgrace;
+    The true man from such saintdom flies,
+      And cattle take his place.
+
+    Land of the green, and of the gray!
+      For workhouse, tomb, and jail
+    Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,
+      And answer, Innisfail,
+    Tell us which tint thou seest most,
+      The old one or the new?
+    The green of which our poets boast,
+      Or the more sombre hue?
+    Few wear the green: a countless host
+      Have donned the gray for you.
+
+    Island of verdure, glorious land!
+      So rich in fertile plains,
+    Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,
+      Yet famine ever reigns;
+    Where through the mellow ripening corn
+      The balmiest zephyrs sigh,
+    Where brighter seems each glowing morn,
+      More radiant each sky;
+    Where ’tis misfortune to be born,
+      And happiness to die.
+
+    Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled
+      To think he played once more,
+    A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,
+      Beside the cabin door--
+    The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,
+      Upon his mother’s knee,
+    He first had learned to lisp a prayer
+      For Ireland’s liberty,
+    And ever pregnant seemed the air
+      With joyous melody.
+
+    His fancy changed: the youthful face
+      In sternness now was set,
+    His woes had left no coward trace
+      Upon his spirit yet;
+    His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,
+      His cheeks were all aglow;
+    Expanded seemed the hollow chest,
+      His brows contract, as though
+    Disturbed and broken was his rest
+      By some nocturnal foe.
+
+    He dreamt that in his native land,
+      Away from this bleak jail,
+    He stood within a meadow grand,
+      A shamrock-spangled vale.
+    Above the scene the sun-rays bright
+      In glittering grandeur beamed,
+    Around him in their golden light
+      Ten thousand bayonets beamed,
+    And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!
+      Green Erin’s banner streamed.
+
+    From town and village, hill and glen,
+      With clamorous fife and drum,
+    From mountain brake and lowland fen
+      The mustering legions come;
+    The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,
+      Has brought his dinted blade;
+    While quickly from the neighboring town
+      Flock in the sons of trade;
+    The farmer flings his good spade down,
+      And joins the dense brigade.
+
+    The fiery Northmen, in whose veins
+      Still flows the blood of those
+    Who on a hundred battle-plains
+      Have conquered Erin’s foes--
+    The brave descendants of O’Neill,
+      A stern and fearless band,
+    A living wall of sparkling steel
+      Beneath the old flag stand,
+    And many a Saxon foe shall feel
+      Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.
+
+    With Ulster’s columns, side by side,
+      Are Munster’s squadrons massed,
+    Like tigers into line they glide,
+      So noiselessly and fast;
+    Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green
+      They bear into the fray,
+    Through England’s host their sabres keen
+      Shall carve a corse-strewn way,
+    And Limerick and Skibbereen
+      Be well avenged to-day.
+
+    Proud Leinster, all your chivalry
+      To arms electric spring;
+    High ’mid the battle’s revelry
+      Your stirring shout shall ring;
+    And many a foe this day shall rue
+      Your fierce, impetuous might;
+    The scenes that gallant Wexford knew
+      Shall be reversed ere night;
+    The epitaph to Emmet due
+      Your gleaming swords shall write.
+
+    O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives
+      Within your ranks this hour;
+    Before the strength your hatred gives
+      Well may the despot cower.
+    Think of your long, black night of tears,
+      And say, can you forget
+    The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers--
+      That huge, uncancelled debt,
+    The wrongs of thrice two hundred years
+      That scourge your province yet?
+
+    Hark to that distant rumbling sound!
+      See, yonder come the foe;
+    Now be our arms with victory crowned,
+      The foreign scum laid low.
+    The stillness and the calm are o’er,
+      And many a sulphurous cloud,
+    Betinged with flame and dripping gore,
+      Shall form a battle-shroud
+    For those whose tongues may swell no more
+      The nation’s slogan loud.
+
+    Like hostile torrents armies clash,
+      And steel now crosses steel,
+    The lurid flames incessant flash,
+      And volleyed thunders peal;
+    But backward reel the alien ranks,
+      With one exultant cry,
+    Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,
+      Not vainly will ye die;
+    Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,
+      The craven red-coats fly!
+
+    ’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;
+      And though yon darling flag
+    May float above our castle towers
+      A torn and tattered rag,
+    ’Tis still our own; and every fold
+      Preserved us from the strife,
+    Each shred around that flag-staff rolled
+      Unpierced by ball or knife,
+    Is worth a mine of virgin gold--
+      Aye, worth a hero’s life.
+
+    From slimy cell and dungeon damp
+      Bring forth our prisoned men;
+    Gather, ye braves, from every camp,
+      To cheer them home again.
+    What though to-day they did not bleed
+      To share our victory,
+    We reap the harvest of their seed,
+      So victors still they be;
+    From faction they our people freed,
+      And now our land is free.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake
+      The city with your strain;
+    Your loudest music cannot break
+      The felon’s rest again.
+    His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,
+      Nor left a single ray,
+    For all that but this moment shone
+      Retreat before the day;
+    But that last, loving, pitying one
+      Has borne his soul away.
+
+    “Died in his cell”--and nothing more;
+      ’Twas all his comrades heard;
+    But of the dream he had before
+      He died,--oh, not a word!
+    They found him on the coarse straw bed,
+      A smile upon his face,
+    And, “Number 28 found dead,”
+      Was whispered round the place;
+    And the jail doctor shook his head
+      And wondered at the case!
+
+
+
+
+THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]
+
+
+    An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,
+      ’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,
+    There is not much fun in recovering rent
+      Where the Land League has hold of the people;
+                But upheaval of earth
+                Is good reason for mirth,
+        ’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,
+                Compared to a seat
+                Where the Commoners meet
+        When Mulligan rises to order.
+
+    A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,
+      Catarrhic attacks are not charming,
+    There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain
+      That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.
+                Should close diagnosis
+                Reveal your probocis
+        To be of your weakness recorder,
+                You might foolishly curse;
+                But it’s very much worse
+        When Mulligan rises to order.
+
+    The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,
+      A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,
+    Are music compared to the agonized yell
+      Of rage and derision, his greeting;
+                You go home to your bed
+                With a pain in your head,
+        By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;
+                Your sleep is a blight,
+                Your comfort takes flight,
+                Your breathing is tight,
+                You scratch and you bite,
+                Or you wake with affright
+                As you dream through the night
+        That Mulligan rises to order!
+
+
+
+
+ERIN MACHREE (1798).
+
+
+    The sun had gone down in a halo of glory,
+      And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray
+    On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,
+      The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.
+    Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,
+    And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,
+    We gathered together in sorrow and weeping
+      For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!
+
+    From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,
+      Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;
+    We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,
+      And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.
+    Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us
+    We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,
+    While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus
+      That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!
+
+    But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,
+      Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;
+    When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,
+      ’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!
+    Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,
+    The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,
+    Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying
+      The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!
+
+    Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow
+      With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;
+    Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow--
+      That morning must dawn on our island at last.
+    Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;
+    Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them
+    To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them
+      To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!
+
+
+
+
+THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.
+
+
+When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years
+ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret
+conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he
+decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and
+Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly
+attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently
+to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the
+combined detective forces.
+
+Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff
+of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua
+Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to
+Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his
+impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is
+fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul
+aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely
+jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount
+Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,
+cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.
+
+She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional
+nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all
+the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a
+renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his
+constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,
+in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in
+petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix
+surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his
+coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces.
+Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the
+postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was
+quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to
+witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the
+other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a
+miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging
+promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase
+to that winning post, the door.
+
+Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of
+night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst
+out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be
+snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the
+amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would
+remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of
+slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of
+feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.
+
+Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra
+professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,
+but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or
+other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of
+civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed
+on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any
+postal manual.
+
+Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not
+phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad
+fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our
+rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.
+London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and
+cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to
+Love’s young dream in the entire A division.
+
+He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids
+either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and
+there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a
+maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted
+brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every
+five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a
+week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a
+school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or
+so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular
+as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed
+around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of
+sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If
+accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and
+forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.
+
+In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen
+cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four
+washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.
+
+His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent
+intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley
+Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of
+promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare
+not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet
+day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big
+brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted
+to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular
+London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.
+
+No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all
+these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he
+brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been
+kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not
+been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful
+affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,
+Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2
+guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”
+
+The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer
+in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the
+elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the
+confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their
+secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the
+pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.
+
+By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It
+was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,
+but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see
+her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill
+under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
+
+He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest
+observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”
+he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold
+forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,
+mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight
+effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,
+water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no
+response.
+
+“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens
+reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up
+alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a
+disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and
+electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a
+stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred
+spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,
+of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare
+the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,
+and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with
+me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or
+Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest
+Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or
+whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”
+
+And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the
+bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of
+which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of
+plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool
+shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman
+was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at
+robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in
+the shape of tears.
+
+The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted
+Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the
+most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t
+tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish
+colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a
+charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought
+it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’
+figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.
+
+This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which
+shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit
+those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily
+Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping
+vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to
+remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins
+himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of
+his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at
+least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric
+light.
+
+
+
+
+BALFOUR’S WISH.
+
+
+    When members have taken their usual places,
+      And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,
+    The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,
+      Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;
+    And as, one by one, question follows on question,
+      Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,
+    In agony mental that spoils his digestion,
+      But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”
+
+    “Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,
+      “How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”
+    “Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,
+      “The average size of potatoes in Clare?”
+    A third seeks a legal opinion, without
+      Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,
+    And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,
+      While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.
+
+    Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,
+      Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,
+    What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?
+      Does he ever indulge in the national car?
+    Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?
+      Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?
+    And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,
+      “Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”
+
+
+
+
+OUR CAUSE.
+
+
+    Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,
+    Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,
+    Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,
+    Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,
+    Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,
+    With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:
+    Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,
+    For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!
+
+    Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,
+    And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,
+    And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,
+    They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.
+    The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,
+    No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,
+    But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,
+    The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.
+
+    It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;
+    It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;
+    O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more
+    Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.
+    Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,
+    And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;
+    But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,
+    And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.
+
+    What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,
+    That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,
+    That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,
+    Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?
+    ’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,
+    No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;
+    Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,
+    And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!
+
+
+
+
+SERVED HIM RIGHT.
+
+     [An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the
+     Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat
+     right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor
+     creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”--_London
+     Graphic._]
+
+
+    I have no tears for brother Pat,
+      Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,
+    On the Egyptian desert, that
+      He might assist in England’s glory.
+    The foes he fought were not his own,
+      Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;
+    Then why should I his fate bemoan?
+      O brother, faithless and degraded!
+
+    He saw how Saxon laws at home
+      Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,
+    Why should he cross the ocean’s foam
+      To place that hated yoke on others?
+    The Arabs slew him in a fight
+      For all by brave and free men cherished--
+    Ay, for the cause of truth and right,
+      For which his kith and kin had perished.
+
+    No Arab chief in Ninety-eight
+      Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;
+    They lent no spears to swell the hate
+      Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.
+    But those who wrapt our homes in flame
+      And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle--
+    It was for them--oh, burning shame!
+      My brother gave his life in battle.
+
+    Sure, every memory of late
+      Must from his wretched heart have vanished;
+    Our hills and valleys desolate,
+      Our ruined homes, our people banished.
+    And yet, God knows, he learned in youth
+      The gloomy story of his sireland--
+    Drank in at mother’s knees the truth
+      That England is the scourge of Ireland.
+
+    I cannot weep for brother Pat--
+      I hate the hellish cause he died for;
+    False traitor to the freedom that
+      His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;
+    E’en when in tearful dreams I see
+      The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,
+    My grief is changed to anger. He
+      Was treacherous to the land that bore him!
+
+
+
+
+RAPPAREE SONG.
+
+
+    Come up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,
+    And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;
+    The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,
+    And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.
+    Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,
+    And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:
+    Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears
+    We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.
+
+    They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die
+    Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;
+    Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,
+    And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;
+    Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows--
+    They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;
+    And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,
+    Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!
+
+    We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,
+    We’re traitors because we are true to our land,
+    And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel
+    That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!
+    They have hunted us down now for many a day;
+    To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;
+    For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,
+    Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.
+
+
+    You tendered us when famine came
+      The pity of a thought,
+    Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame
+      And hearts and souls you’d bought.
+    Time’s wheel turns round--you’ve lost your place,
+    And right into your tyrant face,
+                Your jibes and sneers
+                Of many years
+                At victims’ tears
+                  Are thrown,
+                And in God’s name,
+                Our hearts aflame,
+                To-day we claim
+                  Our own!
+
+    Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,
+      Muscle and brain we wrought.
+    Toiled, starved, and died--scarce for ourselves
+      The crumbs of Lazarus sought;
+    And when ye flung us out a crust,
+    Our faces grovelling in the dust,
+          We gave ye thanks--
+          No prize, all blanks
+          In our poor ranks
+            Was known;
+          But now, thank God,
+          We’ve spurned your rod,
+          And claim this sod
+            Our own!
+
+    We lift our faces to the sky
+      Where once our heads were bowed,
+    We breathe no more a timid sigh,
+      But speak our thoughts aloud.
+    From dizzy hill and peaceful plain
+    Our voices join in this refrain:
+          The seeds we sow,
+          The crops we grow,
+          The fields we mow,
+            Alone,
+          Without your aid
+          In cash or spade
+          At last are made
+            Our own!
+
+
+
+
+BALFOUR REJOICES.
+
+
+    So the toil of the session is over,
+      My woes for a period cease,
+    And hey for a journey by Dover
+      To latitudes promising peace;
+    Away to recuperate vigor--
+      Away from obstruction’s mad spell--
+    Away from the questions of Biggar--
+      Away from the taunts of Parnell.
+
+    No more my poor head shall be aching
+      With night after night of debate--
+    No more shall my soul feel a quaking
+      At bald, irrepressible prate.
+    And, though ocean attack me with rigor,
+      While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell
+    On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,
+      And getting away from Parnell.
+
+    No more to be quizzed on each capture
+      Of priest or of peasant by night--
+    I could dance the can-can in my rapture,
+      Or stand on my head with delight.
+    Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,
+      Or like a wild Irishman yell
+    Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,
+      And don’t give--ahem--for Parnell!
+
+    Yet I feel an occasional spasm
+      At thoughts of returning at all,
+    ’Twere better to leap down a chasm
+      Or under an avalanche fall;
+    Or, fingers embracing the trigger,
+      Let the pistol’s report loudly tell
+    How I hated the queries of Biggar
+      And the dolorous talk of Parnell.
+
+
+
+
+A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.
+
+
+There may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that
+powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville _Sparrow_, is a
+sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be
+the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville
+_Sparrow_ (_vide_ its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in
+the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of
+Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and
+creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so
+tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the
+times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the
+Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York
+_Herald_ and _Tribune_ and _Times_ and the Boston _Herald_ and a score
+of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the
+_Sparrow_ felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by
+following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,
+advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold
+himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial
+back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He
+was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old
+copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the
+landed gentry of the country.
+
+His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of ground. “You
+know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were
+there. We’ve got to lick the New York _Herald_ and the rest of ’em.
+Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.
+There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious
+management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d
+better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do
+to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might
+skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and
+give us some lively telegrams.”
+
+Well, it _was_ lively for a few weeks after that in the _Sparrow_. One
+day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland--Seven Landlords Shot!” The next
+there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara--Six Agents
+Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the _Tribune_ came out
+with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there
+had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and
+seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious
+reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,
+and who didn’t grasp the fact that the _Tribune’s_ was a three-months’
+record, paralyzed the readers of the _Sparrow_ with a blood-curdling
+telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in
+the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in
+their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having
+suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and
+processes on the half-shell, to being stripped naked and turned loose
+for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time
+the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names
+eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to
+improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of
+variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred
+land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should
+diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:--
+
+     “GALWAY, Tuesday.--A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from
+     which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon
+     yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he
+     weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have
+     been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new
+     veins yet.”
+
+     “At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan
+     boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she
+     can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She
+     wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”
+
+This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the
+editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,
+according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers
+began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen
+murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of
+errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as
+well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the
+chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable bar next door.
+“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.
+Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,
+and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy
+for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the
+_Sparrow_, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish
+correspondent:--
+
+“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose
+energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a
+position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.
+As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,
+and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who
+for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his
+repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to
+abbreviate.
+
+“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose
+brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible
+marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,
+whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin
+elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature
+had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy
+proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we
+asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.
+
+“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of
+being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness
+will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was
+down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought
+me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything
+like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They
+were worn to threads.
+
+“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make
+a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could
+produce anything like a respectable shade.
+
+“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of
+the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the
+others.
+
+“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to
+bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.
+
+“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He
+felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion
+warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and
+succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary
+instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow
+you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.
+
+“‘I gave the man a shilling for him--in two sixpences, so that he could
+balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side
+pocket, it would have brought him down.
+
+“‘I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s
+centre of gravity.
+
+“‘I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the dining-room, but,
+fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.
+In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom
+of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He
+couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.
+He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his
+feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position
+when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect
+his tail.’
+
+“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double
+knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much
+so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot
+out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a
+moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the
+Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails
+in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had
+a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’
+concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of
+a knot on a dog’s tail!’”
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH BRIGADE.
+
+
+    When in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,
+    They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,
+      A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.
+    A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,
+    Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;
+    And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,
+    ’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,
+      And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,
+    When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,--
+      The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.
+    They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,
+    And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,
+    Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,
+    Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose
+      From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,
+    Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,
+      Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;
+    The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang
+    O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang
+    From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might
+    Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,
+      Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!
+
+    Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,
+    Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,
+      In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.
+    Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,
+    They loved the green island, and died where they fought;
+    With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.
+    May we fight the battle of freedom as well
+      For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!
+
+
+
+
+SNOOKS.
+
+
+Justice in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the
+law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high
+priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist
+temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about
+one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British
+honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only
+pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very
+corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends
+to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should
+be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,
+he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable
+record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:--
+
+     “In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative
+     to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of
+     the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There
+     is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.
+     When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he
+     holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks
+     [_laughter_] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by
+     Snooks.’ [_Laughter._]”
+
+Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect
+that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of
+the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,
+deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest
+admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to
+that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:--
+
+    If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street
+    In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,
+    A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,
+      And confusion quite apparent in his looks,
+    An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,
+    You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;
+    The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,
+      ’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.
+
+    A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose
+    It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows
+    A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,
+      Which his dignity but very little brooks.
+    You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,
+    And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,
+    Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff--
+      ’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!
+
+
+
+
+CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.
+
+
+Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of
+whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into
+one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her
+like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism
+first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had
+just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel
+leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty
+conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was
+felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been
+foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at
+Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and
+hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and
+provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful
+conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had
+been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky
+Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The
+volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and
+eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible
+confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their
+presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,
+while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like
+Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were
+seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s
+residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with
+nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express
+for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the
+suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of
+engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the
+defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in
+England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they
+were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed
+to the depths of the silent waters.
+
+It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm
+existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was
+augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county
+constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest
+surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public
+buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags
+of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the
+sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like
+Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,
+and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent
+of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he
+ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.
+Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian
+bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon
+the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in
+garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer
+when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing
+the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the
+troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the
+ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the
+barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,
+bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,
+sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into
+as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.
+
+Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of
+Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without
+knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the
+Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,
+and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of
+Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,
+and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.
+Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and
+tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the
+entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow
+candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as
+to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an
+Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they
+were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold
+the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander
+carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the
+candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or
+was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege
+last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of
+the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a
+doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when
+at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to
+find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and
+would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions
+of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm
+tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that
+battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as
+the Caledonian Candlesticks.
+
+
+
+
+FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.
+
+
+    So they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,
+    A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;
+    Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,
+    And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;
+    All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,
+    With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,
+    Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,
+    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+    When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,
+    Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,
+    Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,
+    Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;
+    With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,
+    With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,
+    You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,
+    But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+    No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?
+    You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;
+    You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,
+    And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;
+    But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,
+    The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,
+    A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,
+    So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
+
+
+
+
+FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.
+
+
+    Hurrah! we stand on Irish land,
+      Our hated foe before us,
+    And once for all, to rise or fall,
+      The green flag flying o’er us,
+    We’ve raised it proudly overhead.
+      God prosper our endeavor,
+    Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,
+      To keep it there forever!
+
+    We marched away at break of day,
+      And sweethearts left behind us,
+    To strike one blow at yon false foe,
+      Whose rusty fetters bind us.
+    For while we bear the name of men,
+      We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,
+    Oh, Ireland shall be free again,
+      Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!
+
+    We’ve listened long to traitors mean,
+      False England’s scarlet praising;
+    We’ve heard them mock our Irish green
+      Until our blood seemed blazing!
+    And chieftains, too, who should be true,
+      Have kept our ranks asunder,
+    But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned
+      In Freedom’s battle-thunder!
+
+    Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,
+      No matter who may lead ’em,
+    And here’s a curse on every slave
+      Who mars the cause of freedom!
+    Let leaders vain aside remain
+      Until their feuds are ended,
+    ’Tis by the man who knows no clan
+      Our flag must be defended.
+
+    We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,
+      From Limerick’s walls to Derry,
+    Bold ramblers from the County Clare
+      And mountaineers from Kerry.
+    We’ll chase our alien foes away,
+      We’ll tear our bonds asunder;
+    We care not who’s to lead to-day,
+      _We’ll_ fight and conquer under!
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.[D]
+
+
+    Far away from the home and the friends they love best,
+    ’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;
+    Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot
+    Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!
+
+    In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,
+    With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;
+    And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,
+    On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!
+
+    Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,
+    True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,
+    With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree--
+    Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!
+
+    When they took them away from that desolate place,
+    They found death had left a bright smile on each face,
+    So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see
+    How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!
+
+    For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind
+    The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;
+    And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,
+    Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!
+
+    Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,
+    Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;
+    And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave
+    Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!
+
+
+
+
+DEATH’S VICTORY.
+
+IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.
+
+
+    The Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;
+    The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;
+    For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,
+    And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.
+
+    But with these ’tis not death--for through every age,
+    In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,
+    In the stories they tell, the examples they give,
+    Of Genius and Truth--he will live! he will live!
+
+    With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine
+    To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;
+    In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,
+    To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.
+
+    But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace
+    The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,
+    The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,
+    That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?
+
+    Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave
+    Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;
+    No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed--
+    He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.
+
+
+    Bear it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,
+      On, on, through the smoke and the glare;
+    Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,
+      We will plant it triumphantly there.
+    Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,
+      ’Twas lost at the base of the hill,
+    See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,
+      Our flag waves triumphantly still!
+
+    We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,
+      In sunshine and shower, side by side;
+    To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,
+      Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;
+    And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,
+      Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,
+    And our foes even then shall behold that above us
+      Our flag waves triumphantly still!
+
+    ’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;
+      The flag that our children shall bear
+    When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder
+      Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.
+    ’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,
+      And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill
+    To see in the land of their love and devotion
+      Our flag wave triumphantly still.
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.
+
+
+    Come kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and
+    from North,
+    Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!
+    It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak
+    The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;
+    It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,
+    From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,
+    With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,
+    To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.
+
+    Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?
+    Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?
+    Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod
+    By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?
+    ’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,
+    Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?
+    No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand
+    For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!
+
+    By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those
+    Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;
+    By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;
+    By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;
+    By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,
+    And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,
+    Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,
+    Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!
+
+
+
+
+HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.
+
+
+    Arouse ye from your slumbering,
+      Awake to life once more,
+    The time for idle pleadings
+      And for vain regrets is o’er;
+    We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,
+      But in a fight like men,
+    With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms
+      We’ll win our own again.
+
+        Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!
+          Till death we stand,
+          To make our land
+            A nation proud and free.
+
+    We bent unto the tyrant,
+      And we prayed in vain for years,
+    But now we’re going to try, boys,
+      Rifle-balls instead of tears.
+    Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,
+      The rolling of the drum,
+    And in future our petitions
+      From the cannon’s mouth shall come.--Hurrah!
+
+    From Galway right to Wicklow,
+      And from Cork to Donegal,
+    We’ll march once more for liberty
+      To win it or to fall.
+    We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,
+      And guard it with our steel;
+    We’ll show our foes what deadly blows
+      Each Irish arm can deal.--Hurrah!
+
+    In ages past the redcoats quailed
+      Before our fathers’ might;
+    Have we not still the courage left
+      To battle for the right?
+    Though cowards dread the troops in red,
+      We’ll cross their steel with joy,
+    And show that Irish valor was
+      Not spent at Fontenoy.
+
+    The wily knave, the coward slave,
+      To home and life may cling,
+    But there’s no place for falsehood’s face
+      Where gleaming sabres ring!
+    We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage
+      For Freedom and for Right;
+    Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,
+      Our last appeal is fight!
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSENGER.
+
+NOVEMBER 23, 1867.[E]
+
+
+    With bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there--
+    Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;
+    We questioned him with eager eyes--we had not power to speak,
+    For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!
+
+    Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,
+    We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;
+    And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,
+    While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!
+
+    And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,
+    And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;
+    A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,
+    That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!
+
+    And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might
+    Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;
+    Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,
+    Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel--
+
+    Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,
+    Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face--
+    Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,
+    It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!
+
+    Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,
+    And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;
+    What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,
+    For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!
+
+    He,[F] boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod
+    The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;
+    Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,
+    With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!
+
+    And he,[G] the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d
+    Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;
+    And such a death--the felon’s death--the death that villains die--
+    He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!
+
+    And, last of all, the father,[H] who that day would leave behind
+    Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:
+    No wonder if he faltered--’twas, oh God! a fearful test;
+    Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.
+
+    And these are murderers, they say--are cowards, base and vile:
+    These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle--
+    Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!
+    Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.
+
+
+
+
+A TYPICAL TRIAL.
+
+
+Joseph O’Graball, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in
+the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace
+and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid
+offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I
+shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real
+cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably
+one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional
+magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found
+temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed
+into law.
+
+Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality
+decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,
+but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to
+nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing
+faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest
+provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can
+tell an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of
+his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side
+with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every
+individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He
+is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and
+arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a
+mustache.
+
+Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life
+lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a
+simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is
+little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless
+there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting
+this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no
+leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But
+the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to
+arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,
+unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to
+his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?
+Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A
+goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about
+Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might
+have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in
+enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.
+
+With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark April night a
+sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,
+and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,
+they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty
+nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the
+indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,
+which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary
+evidence.
+
+“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”
+
+“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.
+
+“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,
+and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to
+destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious
+Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of
+England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and
+the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.
+
+“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset
+or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the
+ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”
+
+“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”
+
+“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”
+
+“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before
+my men. Come along.”
+
+Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and utterly amazed and
+confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,
+where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into
+the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones
+what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality
+a rich burlesque:--
+
+“Prisoner, what is your name?”
+
+“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”
+
+“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have
+been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of
+such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a
+note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is
+correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”
+
+“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”
+
+“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male
+gender?”
+
+“He wore breeches, anyhow.”
+
+“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,
+make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the
+customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case
+is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,
+prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”
+
+“Yes, your honor.”
+
+“And this hammer?”
+
+“Yes, your lordship.”
+
+“And these nails?”
+
+“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”
+
+“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and
+this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and
+revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your
+diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how
+far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of
+your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do
+you say?”
+
+“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood
+with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens
+be his bed; and the nails--the nails--the troth, I don’t know what I
+wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the
+sarjent.”
+
+“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.
+The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police
+barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand
+grenades.”
+
+“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but
+he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient
+magistrate proceeded:--
+
+“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”
+
+“Yes, your washup.”
+
+“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?”
+
+“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”
+
+“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter--a very
+important letter--from New York. Where did you discover that?”
+
+“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”
+
+“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream
+of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,
+prisoner, what is this drawing?”
+
+“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was
+thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so
+proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”
+
+“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with
+the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,
+with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that
+the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through
+that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”
+
+“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat
+should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking
+you are.”
+
+“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter
+is dated New York--the most treasonable locality on the face of the
+earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother--(of course you’re all brothers.
+Sergeant, make a note of that)--I write these few lines hoping they will
+find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.
+(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I
+cannot discern it just now.) I met the ould man--(Rossa, I suppose.
+Make a note, sergeant)--on landing. He would advise you not to kill the
+ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old--oh! horrible! I see it all. They have
+actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You
+might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,
+to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the
+rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means--they begin with the
+same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he
+mean by that?”
+
+“Um--um--yourself, I think, your washup.”
+
+“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel
+would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the
+overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed
+further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world
+might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such
+desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,
+I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence
+with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the
+highest sentence in my power--three months’ imprisonment--and, sergeant,
+just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”
+
+Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither
+himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought
+his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was
+convicted. And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of
+the coercion act.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.
+
+
+    Oh pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;
+    And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright
+    That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night--
+    An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.
+    I am very, very sorry for the _Alabama’s_ pranks,
+    I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,
+    But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,
+    Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.
+
+    As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,
+    Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;
+    To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,
+    And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.
+    But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare
+    Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,
+    And send his best establishments cavorting through the air--
+    Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.
+
+    Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,
+    A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.
+    Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,
+    And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.
+    There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,
+    Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,
+    And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,
+    Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.
+
+    Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,
+    I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.
+    And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,
+    Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.
+    But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,
+    Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,
+    Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,
+    Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A BOMB.
+
+
+    Where Shannon’s waves with smiling face
+    Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,
+    A modest cabin stood beside
+    Its gentle perfume-laden tide.
+    The sunshine of an honest life,
+    A prattling child, a loving wife,
+    The joys of home, their blessings shed
+    Around the peasant tenant’s head.
+        The twinkling stars of summer skies
+        Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,
+        His baby’s locks the noonday rays
+        Encircled with a golden haze.
+
+    But drear December, dark and chill,
+    Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,
+    Sickness and famine scourged the land;
+    And in their train the landlord band,
+    And aiding in their mission dire
+    The liveried hounds in England’s hire.
+    In one brief hour their work was o’er,
+    A happy home was home no more.
+        The wintry skies looked sadly down,
+        Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,
+        Upon the babe that sobbed to rest
+        Upon its dying mother’s breast.
+
+    A week--a month--he had no power
+    To mark or count each anguished hour,
+    He knew not if ’twere night or day
+    When wife and infant passed away.
+    Without a hope to dull the pain
+    That numbed his heart and seared his brain,
+    Despair behind and gloom before,
+    He left his native Shannon’s shore,
+        Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press
+        The ship’s dark side with fond caress,
+        While chimes from many a distant bell
+        Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.
+
+    Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,
+    With earnest faces fierce and grim,
+    Are gathered near a silent swamp,
+    Rough toilers from a mining camp;
+    The rasping tones of Ulster greet
+    The voice of Munster soft and sweet,
+    And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,
+    But one and all are Ireland’s friends.
+        Yet whispering pines that bend above
+        Hear words of hatred, not of love;
+        Tears that from eyes of strong men fall
+        Are not of mercy, but of gall.
+
+    Each has a sickening tale to tell
+    Of England’s robber rule of hell,
+    Each has a deeply cherished cause
+    To hate her power and curse her laws.
+    “Then who will venture life, and go
+    To wreak our vengeance on this foe,
+    Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”
+    And he from Shannon answers “I!”
+        The western breezes catch the vow
+        That surges from his bosom now,
+        The exile’s vengeful brand to bear
+        And smite the tiger in his lair.
+
+    In Babylonian halls to-night
+    Are strains of mirth and flashing light,
+    The sheen of satin, gleaming gems
+    In scores of priceless diadems;
+    These are the butterflies, the drones,
+    Vampires who feed on blood and bones.
+    Ah, cruel parasites, beware,
+    One victim of your wrong is there.
+        The London skies are black with cloud
+        The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,
+        As by the despot’s citadel
+        A hand from Shannon fires the shell.
+
+    England, to thee and thine belongs
+    The memory of uncounted wrongs
+    That, multiplied through all the years,
+    Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.
+    Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,
+    Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold
+    Can turn the wrath thou hast defied
+    Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.
+        Thy future sky is overcast,
+        Thy halcyon days forever past,
+        Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm
+        Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.
+
+
+
+
+AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).
+
+
+    Avenging, though dim, with the dust of inaction,
+      And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,
+    With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,
+      And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,
+    The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,
+      Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,
+    To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,
+      That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.
+
+    The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,
+      With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,
+    But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number
+      That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.
+    And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,
+      To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,
+    The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow
+      The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).
+
+
+    Christmas is here with its fun and frivolity,
+      Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,
+    Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,
+      We should be happy--for Christmas is here.
+    Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,
+      We have no heart for festivities gay--
+    Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,
+      Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.
+        Oh, dear! what will become of us?
+        Will they blow up every man or but some of us?
+        Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!
+        Give us a rest--we are pining away.
+
+    Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior
+      To the dread terrors that nightly control
+    All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,
+      Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!
+    Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,
+      Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,
+    For we may not place a moment’s dependency
+      How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!
+        O Lord! but the immensity
+        Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity
+        Splits through the dullest official head’s density,
+        Turning our locks into premature gray.
+
+    Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,
+      Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,
+    Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,
+      Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.
+    How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,
+      When it may shortly be scattered around,
+    With scarce a prospect--oh future precarious!
+      That a brass button would ever be found?
+        Oh, dear! is there a river in
+        England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in
+        Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in
+        Each beating heart that is left above ground?
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).
+
+
+    Oh, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears
+    Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,
+    Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?
+    The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?
+    In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom
+    Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;
+    See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown--
+    God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!
+
+    Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons
+    Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,
+    And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear
+    Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;
+    Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow
+    That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?
+    Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,
+    God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!
+
+    Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest
+    From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;
+    May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped
+    Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;
+    For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,
+    Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,
+    Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;
+    So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.
+
+
+    John Bull looked haggard and drear
+                            With fear,
+    As the bells rang out the old year,
+                            “Oh, dear!”
+    He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,
+    I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,
+    My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,--
+                            It’s queer.
+
+    “With Hans I would like to agree,
+                            For he
+    Is an inch or two taller than me,
+                            You see;
+    But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,
+    And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,
+    And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout
+                                    Mit glee.’
+
+    “Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way
+                                    Is gay
+    At my numerous signs of decay
+                                    Each day;
+    He snaps his fingers right under my nose,
+    Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,
+    And has not a pitying word for my woes
+                                    To say.
+
+    “I once could warn Ivan the bear--
+                                    Take care
+    How the lion you stir in his lair,
+                                    Beware!
+    But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,
+    And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,
+    And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat
+                                    Out there.
+
+    “But my worst and my ugliest fright,
+                                    A sight
+    That keeps me in shivering plight
+                                    All night,
+    Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,
+    He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,
+    And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know
+                                    His might!
+
+    “So for me there’s no Happy New Year,
+                                  Oh, dear!
+    But doubt, and misgiving, and fear
+                                  Are here.
+    My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,
+    They cuff me before and they kick me behind,
+    And in all the world not a friend can I find
+                                  To cheer!”
+
+
+
+
+READY AND STEADY.
+
+A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).
+
+
+    Ready, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,
+      Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;
+    Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,
+      Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.
+    Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor
+      Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;
+    Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,
+      You must decide in the dawning new year.
+
+    Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,
+      Comrade or foeman?--your choice must be made;
+    Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,
+      Neither has room for a neutral brigade.
+    Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,
+      There is no welcome or place for you here;
+    Arms but of you men--fearless and true men--
+      Strike the last blow in the coming new year.
+
+    Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,
+      Victory marches, but never despair;
+    Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance
+      Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.
+    Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,
+      Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,
+    Then, be your story sadness or glory,
+      Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.
+
+
+
+
+WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.
+
+
+So you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable
+of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly
+busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.
+
+You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the
+landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any
+overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of
+income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad
+luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,
+and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police
+in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered
+on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their
+money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent
+collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been
+easily managed without a peeler at all, but the landlords wanted bad to
+force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from
+them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in
+and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.
+
+So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by
+playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at
+their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting
+fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture
+outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each
+other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date
+lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,
+and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain
+Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they
+were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner
+recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”
+and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special
+correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like
+journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be
+dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,
+blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in
+Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from
+the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible
+state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar
+contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings
+of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole _corps d’armee_ and a
+part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs
+and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised
+to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,
+Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that
+head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he
+didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his
+walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly
+have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have
+found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.
+
+Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the
+parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,
+in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever
+distilled in these parts--and that’s a big word. The still was away
+somewhere in the mountains,--it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into
+geographical details,--and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger
+between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the
+towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to
+the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,
+and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe
+that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of
+that.
+
+Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and
+one day some sleeveen--it was never found out who the stag was--came
+into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat Moran had
+guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew
+that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat
+had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and
+as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband
+material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if
+he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of
+dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no
+position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might
+be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his
+brain.
+
+In five minutes he was _en route_ for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary
+men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did
+find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried
+consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen
+which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,
+and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of
+whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was
+lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,
+awaiting the crisis.
+
+The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The
+search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and
+seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They
+sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem
+examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with
+their bayonets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander
+went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He
+found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back
+with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.
+
+Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung
+to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.
+
+“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his
+foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first
+object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and
+poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.
+
+“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very
+bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this
+blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck
+on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;
+and now--”
+
+But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the
+house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with
+his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a
+pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He
+would have been left in the cold that day.
+
+You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran
+fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to
+Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.
+He would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who
+heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp
+of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There
+never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold
+of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,
+eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly
+ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur
+and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept
+upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His
+tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could
+utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him
+how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives
+it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to
+accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a
+[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]
+bad habit.”
+
+“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has
+been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has
+wasted his opportunities.”
+
+“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank
+[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I
+can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, ---- my eyes!”
+[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].
+
+“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.”
+
+“How the ---- [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and
+theological disquisitions] can I?”
+
+His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough
+scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of
+an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to
+Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a
+note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two
+three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of
+pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand
+and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he
+wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with
+himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions
+every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife
+that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over
+a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the
+arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had
+parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and
+didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better
+half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he
+offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this
+side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.
+
+His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his
+report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him
+sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official
+archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The
+reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into
+a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.
+Strange story, ain’t it?
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.[I]
+
+BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.
+
+
+    Ghastly white with affright,
+      Down stairs they thundered,
+    Peelers and grenadiers--
+      Nearly a hundred.
+
+    Out of doors shrieking loud
+      Rushed the scared hundred,
+    They had no wish to be
+      Blown up or sundered.
+    Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,
+    “Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,
+    Wildly in flight they sped--
+            Disgruntled hundred.
+
+    Bang! went that bombshell near,
+    Were they o’ercome with fear?
+    You bet your boots they were--
+            All of the hundred;
+    Theirs not to question why
+    Roof soared aloft to sky--
+    Theirs but to cut and fly
+            Sensible hundred.
+
+    Women to right of them,
+    Women to left of them,
+    Children in front of them
+            Fainted or wondered;
+    But they were trained too well--
+    They knew what meant that shell,
+    So with a gruesome yell,
+    Head over heels, pell-mell,
+            Scattered the hundred.
+
+    Did they flash sabres bare
+    Out on the trembling air?
+    No, they just left them there,
+            There to be plundered;
+    And through the struggling mass,
+    Matron and babe and lass,
+    Plunged and strove hard to pass,
+    Choking and gasping--
+            Ah, horrified hundred.
+
+    Glass smashed to right of them,
+    Beams flew to left of them,
+    Walls gaped in front of them,
+            Shattered and sundered;
+    All round the citadel,
+    Stormed by that awful shell,
+    Plaster and brickbats fell
+    Down on their heads in storms.
+    Oh, it was worse than hell;
+    Out over prostrate forms
+            Charged all the hundred.
+
+    When shall the record fade
+    Of the quick time they made?
+            All the world wondered.
+    Greyhound or Arab steed
+    Could not excel the speed
+            Of that swift hundred.
+
+
+
+
+AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.[J]
+
+
+    Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;
+      Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;
+    Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,
+      Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!
+    Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;
+      Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,
+    Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken
+      Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.
+
+    Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;
+      Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.
+    Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,
+      Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.
+    The iron has entered your souls, and forever
+      May it brand you as craven and false to your race;
+    May the years that roll by bring oblivion never
+      To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.
+
+    Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances
+      Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,
+    Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances
+      Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.
+    Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,
+      Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,
+    Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,
+      By coating in slime every link of your chain.
+
+    But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember
+      The people and ye are no longer the same,
+    And every heart where one flickering ember
+      Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.
+    Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered
+      God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.
+    The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,
+      Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.
+
+    When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,
+      When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,
+    Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished
+      While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.
+    In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,
+      When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,
+    Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,
+      In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.
+
+
+
+
+EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.
+
+
+For enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to
+“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American
+newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of
+one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,
+if we are to believe his friends.
+
+Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed
+scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.
+
+When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event
+on the bandages.
+
+When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange
+demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his
+trombone.
+
+He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition engraven on blocks of
+ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway
+collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the
+mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after
+the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.
+
+But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few
+years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked
+up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of
+making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage
+soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the
+ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African
+substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for
+luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.
+
+Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to
+take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out
+for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of
+night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded
+its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of
+adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s
+kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.
+
+He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once
+half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and
+toothsome brown; still he had survived.
+
+But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable
+adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory
+since Stanley had left.
+
+Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by
+such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero
+in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on
+their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked
+backs.
+
+Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the
+speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an
+escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but
+for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of
+the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!
+
+
+
+
+A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.
+
+
+He was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the
+cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common
+herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations
+that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he
+wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the
+principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them
+for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of
+England,” “the President of France,” “the King of Italy,” “the Emperor
+of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.
+He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual
+appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the
+saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;
+Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on
+all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had
+planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the
+knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s
+destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy
+morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,
+sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit
+him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”
+
+
+
+
+THE LION’S LAMENTATION.
+
+
+    They are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,
+        Over the frontier they’re swarming;
+    And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,
+        But grin as if its melody were charming;
+    Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,
+    Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?
+    Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?
+        Really, the prospect is alarming.
+
+    ’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,
+        Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;
+    We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,
+        But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.
+    No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,
+    From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,
+    Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,
+        Except he be a Corydon or Carey.
+
+    Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,
+        Am I not your father and your mother?
+    Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,
+        Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.
+    Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,
+    All the dudes of London your image will caress,
+    Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,
+        And we’ll be the world to one another.
+
+    Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?
+        The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,
+    Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,
+        Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?
+    O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!
+    Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,
+    And--my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal--
+        That d--d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!
+
+
+
+
+MEMORIAL ODE
+
+TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF
+VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
+
+
+    We meet to-night to greet a name
+      Symbolical for fifty years
+    Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,
+      Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.
+    To mingle with the empty glee
+      Of laugh and cheer from English throat,
+    A new tone in this Jubilee,--
+      A strong, discordant, Irish note.
+
+    What has she done for us or ours;
+      What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;
+    That in her garlanding of flowers
+      We should conceal our Irish chain?
+    When on the dreary roadside lying
+    Were babe and mother faint and dying,
+    When heaped were nameless Irish graves,
+    When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,
+    When every blast
+    That swept the mast
+    Of fever ship was moaning, sighing
+    The story of an awful crime
+    That ringing down the aisles of Time
+    Has filled the universe with song--
+    A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong--
+    What act of mercy, gentle, human,
+        What deed of grace to prove her woman,
+        What sign gave she that Irish true man
+          Could treasure in his heart to be
+          A token of her Jubilee?
+
+        She came when but one spring had spread
+          Its buds above our dark decay,
+        Around, among, between the dead,
+          Her idle, pompous journey lay,
+        She saw a million graves, but shed
+          No tear to wash the sin away.
+        Before or since what ear hath heard
+          In all our years of dark eclipse
+        One feeble protest, or a word
+          Of pity from her queenly lips.
+        Nay, when our fearsome famine wail
+          Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,
+        And he stretched hand to save the Gael,
+          Her jealous pride returned his dole.
+    For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,
+    But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.
+
+        A faithful mother--so the bear
+          That rends the bleating lamb apart,
+        And brings it with her cubs to share,
+          Betrays a fond, maternal heart.
+    And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side
+    By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.
+    A faithful wife--from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice
+    Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert--poor Myles Joyce.[K]
+    And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,
+    At memory of the loved ones lost--butchered in this half-century’s reign.
+
+    Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims
+          of landlord wrath;
+    Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the
+          Atlantic’s lonely path;
+    Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back
+          from the scaffold’s gloom;
+    Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of
+          madhouse and union tomb;
+    A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to
+          West over every sea,
+    Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march
+          in her Jubilee.
+
+    Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,
+    Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands
+          and swear to-night
+    To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm,
+          through good and ill,
+    Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.
+    Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,
+    Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.
+
+
+
+
+AN ORANGE ORATION.
+
+
+In no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find
+the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are
+Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from
+Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German
+independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to
+the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of
+the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the
+persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as
+steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of
+the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious
+nation--Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,
+Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant
+nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so
+irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the
+voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a
+description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in
+love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they
+are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will
+find his natural place in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the
+benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent
+features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.
+
+Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in
+Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far
+penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,
+as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well
+testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything
+connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of
+superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest
+a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a
+lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence
+to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that
+England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently
+the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical
+composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a
+notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to
+shun everything green as he would the small-pox--there was only one
+color for a devout Christian to patronize--orange. God had not decorated
+the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful
+tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,
+when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose
+ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an
+Orangeman of the deepest purple dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural
+and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his
+heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie
+down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp
+to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions
+on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old
+woman who declined to shout “To h--with the Pope” at his modest request.
+
+He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,
+of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that
+awakens the enthusiasm of his class:--
+
+“Brethren--We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of
+the great, the glorious, the pious, and the--the--the Orange-headed
+William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,
+I--I--as a matter of fact I--I--get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time
+in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity
+to--to--to, in short--drink his memory--that is to say, to drink--to
+drink--to--oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes
+are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they
+swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,
+and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but
+are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their
+toes--their big toes--upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass
+this--this--this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put
+down, to a certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious
+gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls--of--of--well, they
+struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants
+won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more
+nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into
+Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has
+departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid
+believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.
+(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the
+sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and
+whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us
+and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill
+your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory
+of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;
+here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey
+with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of
+England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to
+glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of
+Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,
+bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of
+diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in
+the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free
+fights.)
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.
+
+
+    What Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world
+      Had a rule so universal as I claim?
+    What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled
+      As my ensign of destruction and of shame?
+    My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;
+      My dominion rules their bodies not alone,
+    But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,
+      And their future, as their present, is my own.
+    Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!
+    Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!
+    Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,
+    Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.
+
+    Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;
+      His tortured slaves in death at last were free.
+    But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass
+      Belongs for all eternity to me.
+    The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,
+      If he once began to worship at my shrine
+    Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,
+      Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.
+    Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,
+    Do not give the drunkard time to even think.
+    In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,
+    Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!
+
+    Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me--
+      Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;
+    Common helots struggle madly to be free,
+      Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.
+    My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,
+      On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.
+    I whet the murderer’s knife--rob mother, children, wife--
+      And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.
+    Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,
+    Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know
+    God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink
+    Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!
+
+
+
+
+CONTRARY COGNOMENS.
+
+
+    If you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,
+    And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;
+    Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,
+    And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;
+    Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;
+    Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.
+    It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,
+    That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.
+
+    Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,
+    Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;
+    Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,
+    And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;
+    Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,
+    Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;
+    Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,
+    Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.
+
+
+
+
+AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.
+
+
+    Angelina Seraphina
+      Wilhelmina Murphy,
+    See on knees here Ebenezer
+      Julius Cæsar Durphy.
+    I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken
+      To a dozen ladies,
+    Rose and Ella, Annabella,
+      And Mirella Bradys.
+    What to me now e’er can be now
+      Hippolita Flanagan?
+    Or sweet Dora Leonora
+      Otherwise O’Branagan?
+    Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe
+      Anastatia Hoolahan?
+    Or Miranda Alexandra
+      May Amanda Woolahan?
+
+    Roderigo Paul Diego
+      Burke may try his part again;
+    Or Bernardo Leonardo
+      Furey seek your heart again.
+    But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;
+      Just espouse my cause, my dear,
+    And I swear I’ll give our heir
+      A name to break your jaws, my dear!
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.
+
+
+    He slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,
+    A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;
+    And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by--
+    The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!
+
+    Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;
+    Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;
+    Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,
+    He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.
+
+    He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;
+    Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;
+    He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won--
+    He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!
+
+    His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,
+    Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.
+    A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,
+    As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.
+
+    He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,
+    He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,
+    He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;
+    And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”
+
+    His dream was changed: again he stood--and she was by his side,
+    Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;
+    Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,
+    When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!
+
+    The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;
+    Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.
+    The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,
+    And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!
+
+    He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;
+    Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.
+    He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,
+    And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!
+
+    A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;
+    He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,--but now in death!
+    The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,
+    And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK’S FOLLY.
+
+
+In a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from
+Rathmines,--which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of
+the Hibernian metropolis,--there boarded, lodged, and sent out his
+washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young
+gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in
+that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer
+walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day
+whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To
+spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose
+to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the
+clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his
+official signature.
+
+Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was
+also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his
+landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling
+Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.
+But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a
+quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his
+face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less
+susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.
+He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He
+would fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine
+weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &
+Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to
+change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut
+article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a
+countess.
+
+He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having
+time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.
+He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British
+Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being
+subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four
+dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.
+Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely
+got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium
+before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not--well, not quite
+a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly
+martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or
+the--hem--nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.
+
+“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial
+artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of--I mean as the
+raven’s wing.”
+
+Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought
+of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the
+dye.
+
+“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the
+scissors.
+
+It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed
+sort of a mustache--what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and
+odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between
+the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the
+coiffeur’s opinion.
+
+“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a
+beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”
+
+A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.
+
+“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of
+your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the
+lather-pot.
+
+They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar
+remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the
+principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed
+with his evil genius.
+
+“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as
+a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”
+
+Alas! He took the Depilatory.
+
+“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the
+curling-tongs.
+
+No, he wasn’t.
+
+“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.
+Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”
+
+Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming
+monotonous. However, he admitted that the speculator who bought his
+teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a
+fortune by the investment.
+
+“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your
+teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look
+gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.
+Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”
+
+Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic
+talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair
+dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had
+arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every
+now and then _en route_, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the
+bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He
+was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then
+another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for
+about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the
+last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,
+he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking
+hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he
+volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know
+him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s
+astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic
+personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the
+house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the
+domestic doorstep, replied emphatically, “I should rather think so!”
+upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.
+
+When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that
+Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting
+his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of
+supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below
+Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred
+gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that
+there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on
+the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested
+himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.
+
+At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning
+sob of fate, the candle went out!
+
+For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more
+composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,
+he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little
+Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his
+with envy and chagrin?
+
+He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined
+friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet
+requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his
+jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of
+Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a
+sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He
+tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not?
+He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration
+complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little
+Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber--to dream he had
+Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the
+Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when
+Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer--that last toddy, no
+doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.
+Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of
+civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out
+upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that
+made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the
+last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating
+madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable
+officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a
+square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police
+manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,
+and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with
+a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that
+he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of
+his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other
+assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he
+promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched
+forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,
+chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a
+varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded
+them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in
+wild and dripping confusion.
+
+That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an
+excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and
+there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque
+night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut
+lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his
+nose--cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird
+melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”
+
+It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his
+teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning
+over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his
+curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head
+altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction
+of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its
+growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had
+invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so
+renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of
+a walnut escritoire.
+
+Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had
+anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is
+now another’s.
+
+
+
+
+CONSTABLE X.
+
+
+    Whose walk is so stately and grand round the beat?
+    What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?
+    What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,
+    Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?
+    Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,
+    Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;
+    The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,
+    Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?
+
+    How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,
+    As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,
+    And kisses the book with a resonant smack,
+    Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.
+    Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat
+    To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,
+    And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex
+    Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.
+
+    Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours
+    When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,
+    And he, even he, that great creature, has known
+    Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.
+    And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt
+    Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.
+    For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,
+    Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.
+
+    Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,
+    But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,
+    He has even unbended to laughter and sport,
+    And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,
+    Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!
+    Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;
+    Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex
+    Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.
+
+
+    Surrounded by bottles and flagons and bowls,
+    To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,
+    Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,
+    The Devil pursued his terrible task.
+    Hatred and lust, and all the horde
+    Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,
+    And when it was brimming with fever and sin,
+    He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.
+
+    Another flask in his hand he raised
+    And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,
+    As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,
+    Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,
+    Doses of poverty, doses of crime,
+    For every region, for every clime,
+    And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb
+    As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.
+
+    And then a barrel he seized to fill
+    With grief and affliction, pain and ill;
+    Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;
+    Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;
+    Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog
+    Till God’s image became but a senseless log,
+    And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer
+    As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.
+
+    The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth
+    As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.
+    And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,
+    North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.
+    And the demon yell as each toper fell,
+    Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!
+    Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,
+    Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”
+
+
+
+
+THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.
+
+
+    Am I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?
+    Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?
+    Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?
+    Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?
+    There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,
+    The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;
+    There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,
+    For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.
+
+    Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?
+    Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?
+    Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know
+    That muscle and brain were contented below;
+    Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold
+    Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,
+    For a very small gift from our riches contents
+    The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.
+
+    But now there’s a muttering startling and strange
+    From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,
+    A really absurd and ridiculous plan
+    To ostracize gold and to dignify man;
+    The base common herd won’t submit any more
+    To a rule that their fathers found proper before,
+    And the veriest scum of the gutters invents
+    Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.
+
+
+
+
+WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.
+
+AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.
+
+
+    Once again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column
+      That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;
+    Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping
+      ’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.
+
+    Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,
+      Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;
+    And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order--
+      The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.
+
+    At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding
+      Mists and clouds of two long decades--picture visions far away,
+    Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,
+      Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.
+
+    Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,
+      And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;
+    In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;
+      They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.
+
+    See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;
+      The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,
+    And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,
+      Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.
+
+    Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping
+      With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;
+    Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending
+      The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.
+
+    Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,
+      While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,
+    For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,
+      Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;
+      Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;
+    For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,
+      Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.
+
+    Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,
+      And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,
+    The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,
+      And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.
+
+
+    Great chieftain, o’er thy silent clay
+    Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,
+    Grief knows no frontier line to-day.
+
+    Among the gifts the nation showers
+    Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours--
+    A shamrock wreath among the flowers.
+
+    A type its emerald leaflets three
+    Of thy best attributes will be--
+    Faith, Courage, and Humanity.
+
+    Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,
+    Courage that with disaster rose,
+    Mercy to brave but beaten foes.
+
+    When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine
+    In her defence with thee and thine
+    Our exiled race were found in line.
+
+    With thee we bore the storm and stress,
+    Hard-fought retreat and onward press
+    Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.
+
+    Thy eagle glances oft might scan
+    Our Celtic features in the van
+    When battle surged round Sheridan.
+
+    And never poured the crimson flood,
+    To mark where desperate valor stood,
+    But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.
+
+    So as your life-stream then we fed,
+    Where’er your own brave nation bled,
+    Our tears to-day with hers are shed.
+
+    Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,
+    Our grief now sobs with your regrets,
+    Our shamrocks fringe your violets.
+
+
+
+
+MAINE AND MAYO.
+
+
+    Six months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,
+    As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;
+    We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,
+    But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.
+    There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,
+    And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,
+    While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train
+    Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.
+
+    Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,
+    The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;
+    And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,
+    Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.
+    One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,
+    And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,
+    Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,
+    “I’m very glad to meet ye--I’m a stranger from Mayo.”
+
+    Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way
+    To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;
+    He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,
+    And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.
+    Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,
+    Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;
+    But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,
+    Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.
+
+    And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose
+    Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,
+    When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,
+    Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,
+    A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze
+    With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days--
+    “Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,
+    And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,
+    Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,
+    But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,
+    Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.
+    Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim
+    That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;
+    While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know
+    How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.
+
+
+
+
+A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.
+
+
+Sandy Row, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in
+Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its
+true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,
+the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from
+prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To
+h--with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its
+consecrated--whiskey consecrated--shore, that Papist foot would be
+carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it
+contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of
+the desecrated pavement.
+
+In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one
+Green--Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and
+immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread
+as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan
+Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in
+more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional
+anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his
+campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable
+commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,
+but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has
+suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half
+a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.
+
+In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in
+consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his
+back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,
+banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,
+blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National
+League invaders.
+
+For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners
+and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an
+assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal
+principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no
+salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.
+
+During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of
+Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a
+howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given
+musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent
+continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval
+for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor
+gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a
+short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’
+duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red
+Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached
+the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the
+influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with
+the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and
+variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in
+scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into
+which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with
+heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,
+and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;
+and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening
+lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear
+at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs
+in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted
+yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the
+thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass
+kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,
+ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that
+you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.
+
+From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there
+isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or
+symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call
+it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about
+four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.
+
+The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to
+this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this
+systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old
+boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary
+utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established
+a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been
+exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate
+measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.
+They were adopted.
+
+Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order--each
+man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander--a
+kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously
+maddening marauders!
+
+Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,
+rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.
+
+Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving
+stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.
+
+The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and
+completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.
+
+Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a
+marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long
+cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.
+
+Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord
+Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes
+and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?
+
+About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis
+commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they
+had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some
+Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his
+night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.
+
+Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly
+raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly
+perfected.
+
+It was dark,--so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent
+choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle
+rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.
+
+Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught
+a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering
+gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a
+step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled
+round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a
+hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,
+and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different
+cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical
+training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,
+paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.
+
+Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,
+like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in
+the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by
+Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of
+the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron
+spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower
+of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he
+turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the
+grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels
+off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the
+air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all
+the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon
+his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.
+
+The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new
+veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the
+Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been
+witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the
+spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of
+pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and
+the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out
+by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men
+that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with
+pickaxes and shovels.
+
+Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111
+forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a
+tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He
+thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain
+their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for
+carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with
+the contents of a tinker’s budget--why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s
+all. They have one motto he appreciates:--
+
+    Whether on the scaffold high,
+      Or in the battle’s van,
+    The fittest place for man to die
+      Is where he dies for man.
+
+That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an
+old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not
+going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.
+1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:--
+
+    Here lies the body of Billy Green,
+    As true a grand master as ever was seen,
+    But although he was green and decidedly fat,
+    He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,
+        false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a
+        lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a
+        measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell
+        cat.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.
+
+A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.
+
+
+    Down by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing
+    Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing--
+    For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:
+    Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath--
+    Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,
+    Curses in purest American; such
+    Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much
+    Room for the rest of the languages--there,
+    Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,
+    Naught but profanity ever in vogue,
+    Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.
+
+    Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether
+    God has ordained they should travel together,
+    But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,
+    Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.
+    Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,
+    Sunshine and harmony--natural growth.
+    While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,
+    Right down among us he stepped: all the while
+    Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,
+    And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,
+    Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.
+
+    Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins
+    Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;
+    Sang at our windows for all they were worth--
+    Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!
+    Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;
+    Nobody hunted the right or left bower;
+    Deserts put verdure on--one little flower
+    Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,
+    Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!
+    Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s _thurrum pogue_[L]
+    Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!
+
+
+
+
+ARAB WAR SONG.
+
+
+    Allah, il Allah! the infidel’s doom
+    Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.
+    The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,
+    And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.
+    The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,
+    Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.
+    How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!
+    Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!
+
+    The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,
+    When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,
+    But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free
+    As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;
+    And their valor will scatter his merciless bands
+    As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,
+    Their fury will break on his terrified host
+    With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.
+
+    Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride
+    He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;
+    He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast
+    As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;
+    And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array
+    Is melting before our wild charges in spray;
+    Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,
+    And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!
+
+    Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,
+    Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;
+    Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,
+    Better freedom in death than existence in chains.
+    On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,
+    See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!
+    Strike swiftly, and spare not--yon turbanless crowd
+    Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
+
+
+
+
+HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.
+
+
+If every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block
+were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and
+what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a
+completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.
+Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.
+His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his
+place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have
+them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night
+to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.
+He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his
+gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful
+jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby
+through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay
+at the parlor door by a ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to
+take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue
+of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen
+variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him
+as a signal to chaw him up--under such circumstances one don’t feel
+inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.
+
+Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of
+life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of
+the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You
+never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some
+horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to
+envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had
+with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered
+hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power
+sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in
+a sling for a fortnight afterwards.
+
+Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all
+kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded
+slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he
+believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life
+that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest
+his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring
+his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him
+half an hour to sit down.
+
+But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion
+is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has
+carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in
+a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in
+a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he
+would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he
+has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he
+thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another
+crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred
+or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and
+didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round
+about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the
+mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a
+picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked
+before--that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s
+sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking
+attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve
+his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has
+travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic
+arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that
+he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not
+to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.
+With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going
+over his half-dozen ordinary albums it is really magnificent to be able
+to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his
+remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he
+can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs
+of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.
+
+
+
+
+NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.
+
+
+I have never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.
+
+I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.
+
+There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,
+who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my
+marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my
+string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.
+
+I thirsted for his blood.
+
+I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my
+part--in fact, it took several parts of me.
+
+I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled
+my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to
+complete the structure.
+
+Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of
+boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was
+illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,--the position. Figure
+2,--one for his nob. Figure 3,--the body blow. Figure 4,--the return.
+Figure 5,--the upper cut. Figure 6,--the cross-counter.
+
+I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,
+till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of
+P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or
+whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could
+have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”
+
+But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults
+with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed
+my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered
+“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the
+bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders
+and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a
+conquering hero.
+
+At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment
+had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself
+to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me
+when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his
+head.
+
+He came.
+
+I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the
+proper figures for the various stages of the battle.
+
+I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the
+improvised ring, tied a handkerchief for a belt round my waist, and
+wanted to shake hands _a la_ Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.
+
+Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another
+figure--which happened to be me.
+
+“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,
+because it resulted in two or three for _my_ nob, and while I was trying
+to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,
+“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the
+regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something
+came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground
+with the back of my head.
+
+I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called
+“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had
+to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my
+left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill
+soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I
+sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the
+other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared
+“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp--“He won’t let me,” before there
+was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,
+and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.
+
+I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen
+to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green
+sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more
+diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.
+
+
+
+
+THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.
+
+     [Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few
+     years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,
+     who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of
+     all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a
+     student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and
+     bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from
+     a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of
+     it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that
+     crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest
+     knocked him out in one short round.]
+
+
+    There once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.--
+    Dr. Blank we shall call him--a Crichton was he;
+    Not a science or language earth ever has known
+    But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own--
+    Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany--these
+    Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;
+    Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,
+    Theology, Medicine, Strategy--pshaw!
+    They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind
+    Which left intellects minor some eras behind.
+    ’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most
+    The Dons of the College--our doctor could boast
+    An intimate knowledge of every tongue
+    Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.
+    In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;
+    For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;
+    A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,
+    Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;
+    He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;
+    Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;
+    In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;
+    In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;
+    Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,
+    And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.
+    If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,
+    The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,
+    Not his be the blame--no, the odium must rest,
+    On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;
+    Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,
+    But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.
+
+
+
+
+A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.
+
+
+I would sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under
+the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so
+dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs
+up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for
+that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there
+that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home
+are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the
+executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic
+dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a
+conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not
+be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed
+a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his
+drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies of the day. I had
+barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey
+wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a
+red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a
+miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,
+a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various
+stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied
+articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with
+thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the
+two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags
+and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to
+guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced
+to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the
+odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the
+kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every
+contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started
+homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such
+stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear
+of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the
+irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was
+blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few
+dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney
+pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a
+garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their
+native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the
+situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,
+and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude
+of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,
+vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at
+irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and
+such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to
+count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It
+would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my
+top-coat was like!
+
+
+
+
+PEGGY O’SHEA.
+
+AN IRISH SERENADE.
+
+
+            The pale moon is beaming,
+              The bright stars are gleaming.
+            Awake from thy dreaming,
+              Acushla, arise!
+            For sure the moon’s light, dear,
+            Though vivid an’ bright, dear,
+            Is but darkest night, dear,
+              Compared with your eyes.
+                    Glimmerin’,
+                    Shimmerin’,
+    Down in the river there,
+      Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,
+    See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,
+      Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        See, your own thrue love
+        Is waitin’ for you, love,
+        So waken anew, love,
+          An’ gladden my sight!
+        Don’t keep me quakin’ here,
+        Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,
+        Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,
+          All the long night;
+                  Quiverin’,
+                  Shiverin’,
+    Faith it’s Decimber, dear,
+      Freezes me, teases me--darlin’ don’t stay;
+    Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,
+      For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        This morn had you been, love,
+        With me, you’d have seen, love,
+        A new dress of green, love,
+          I bought--for, you mind,
+        But last week you said, dear,
+        You hated the red, dear,
+        So get out of bed, dear,
+          An’ let down the blind!
+                  Shyly,
+                  Slyly,
+    Creep to the window now,
+      Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,
+    Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,
+      Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        Why have you waited
+        So long, whin you stated
+        To me that you hated
+          The red of our foes?
+        While you are keepin’
+        Me here with your sleepin’
+        The color is creepin’
+          All over my nose!
+                  Face it,
+                  Chase it,
+    Meet it with bravery,
+      Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.
+    The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,
+      Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+        Och, you are there now,
+        So purty and fair now,
+        I raley declare, now
+          I’m murthered outright;
+        My mouth seems like butter,
+          I hardly can mutter
+        A sintince, or utter
+          A word, love, to-night.
+                Thumpin’
+                An’ bumpin’
+    An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,
+      Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,
+    And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’
+      How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
+
+
+
+
+THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.
+
+
+    The summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,
+    Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;
+    The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,
+    Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.
+    Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain
+    Was one poor limping creature--the embodiment of pain.
+    His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,
+    Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;
+    His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,
+    And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;
+    Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,
+    For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.
+
+    I questioned him--this blighted one--I asked him what the reason
+    Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;
+    And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling
+    Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:--
+
+    “Don’t my uniform tell you that I
+      Am of the unfortunate band,
+    Whom you see day by day passing by,
+      Never pausing a moment to stand;
+    Who, in one perpetual round,
+      Forever are marching, until
+    It seems that while one of us stays overground
+      Fate ordains he shall never be still.
+
+    “‘Tis hard when the bright golden sun
+      Smiles out from a clear azure sky,
+    To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done
+      Till his glory has gone and passed by.
+    And e’en along green country lanes,
+      ’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,
+    And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,
+      Who would care to be tramping all day?
+
+    “Then why do you wonder to hear
+      An unlucky sad mortal complain,
+    Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,
+      In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?
+    Or say, are you looking for smiles
+      From a fellow who feels on the rack,
+    After walking some twenty odd miles
+      On a path like a porcupine’s back?
+
+    “They say that the Muscovite knout,
+      On the back of a troublesome peasant,
+    When wielded by hands that are stout,
+      Is decidedly very unpleasant.
+    The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,
+      Caused aught but delightful sensations,
+    But what were their tortures of old,
+      Compared to our new innovations?
+
+    “No martyr that ever yet died
+      In those times that have long passed away,
+    Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,
+      Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.
+    My feet are denuded of skin,
+      My toes every one are disjointed,
+    For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,
+      And the most of our pavement is pointed!
+
+    “Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,
+      Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,
+    Save where an occasional flaw
+      Leaves a hole in to gather the rain--”
+
+    Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek
+      That emptied a neighboring tavern,
+    He had planted one foot on a peak,
+      While the other was lost in a cavern!
+
+    Then his language assumed such a tone--
+      And one not by any means sweeter--
+    And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan
+      That they couldn’t be put into metre.
+    So thus my sad narrative ends,
+      As I left the poor tortured one raving,
+    And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends
+      Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
+
+
+
+
+APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.
+
+
+If they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall
+have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s
+mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist
+Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the
+census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and
+on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her
+mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who
+is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage
+in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another
+ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan
+retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last
+column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical
+expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she
+filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,
+blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages
+afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be
+known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively
+on that occasion.
+
+Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary
+difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of
+them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she
+threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate, and her sitting
+weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a
+compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity
+is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,--occasionally.”
+
+If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal
+position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is
+fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on
+figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her
+appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of
+adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not
+called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or
+so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her
+record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful
+figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at
+that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years
+ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon
+and bottle-feeding.
+
+The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is
+the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it
+for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a
+commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey
+without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and
+lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the
+corner into our street on his return from a month’s absence he is the
+central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young
+Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his
+arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in
+his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.
+He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities
+until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.
+The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success
+as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal
+signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we
+call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,
+John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or
+Theodore--Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter
+fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we
+feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.
+“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or
+an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you
+short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We
+have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s
+at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,
+and--” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and
+knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be
+followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some
+of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered some refuge
+to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling
+whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be
+left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.
+
+But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a
+father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper
+should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist--there was another
+Robinson _en route_. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent
+the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came--in twos, in threes,
+in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,
+and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast
+in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt
+like Noah--only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the
+dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,
+and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers
+present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had
+been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room
+was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one
+corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the
+twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling
+with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church
+yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and
+he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?
+Send me a volume, four hundred pages, bound in morocco, forty names on
+a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two
+or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m
+ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,
+let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”
+and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson
+was at home this census time.
+
+
+
+
+NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.
+
+
+    Rank on rank they march together,
+    Through the lanes and o’er the heather,
+    And the rhythmic ringing beat
+    Of their measured swinging feet
+    Music bears in martial tone
+    To the land they call their own.
+    Happy land that proudly boasts,
+    Not coerced, unwilling hosts,
+    But around her throne can feel
+    Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,
+    Hearts whose love no bribes retain,
+    Hands that never strike in vain.
+
+    Through the fields of yellow grain,
+      Through the woods of leafy green,
+    Here and there on many a plain,
+      Are their snowy targets seen;
+    And the mountains echo back
+    From their peaks the rifles’ crack.
+
+    Freedom knows how keen of eye,
+      Firm of nerve and quick of finger,
+    Are the marksmen brave who vie
+      In the skill they freely bring her.
+    Bunker Hill and Concord tell
+    They have won their laurels well.
+
+    And should war assail our shore,
+      Still to guard it ever ready
+    As their fathers were of yore.
+      Calm, yet eager, true and steady,
+    Are the loyal ranks that play
+    But at mimic strife to-day.
+
+
+
+
+A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.
+
+
+They have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society
+rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.
+E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina
+cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.
+R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical
+instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a
+sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the
+bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of
+“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in
+which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment
+might be dangerous. It might have led to revolution, and it wouldn’t be
+logical--or geological--to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.
+
+I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific
+symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay
+ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of
+antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly
+mastodon.
+
+I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered
+during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour
+or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been
+kind enough to label them--“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land
+Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the
+Bone Age,” etc.
+
+I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement
+in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell
+what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the
+“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,
+with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been
+told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned
+not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery
+gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the
+whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be
+inspired by the sight of this--this--this ancient weapon--it is
+evidently a spear-head--which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic
+warrior of old has probably pierced many a proud invader’s breast. This
+spear-head, ladies and gentlemen--”
+
+I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty
+bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some
+repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the
+pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to
+finish a job outside!”
+
+
+
+
+JONES’S UMBRELLA.
+
+
+There has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past
+week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the
+whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the
+atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable
+character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth
+wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the
+heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses
+of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to
+have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in
+view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a
+scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar
+continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,
+principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford
+shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of
+an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,
+but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t disturb a seam in it.
+It has only one defect. Given sufficient space--say Yellowstone Park,
+and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when
+Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those
+occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left
+their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the
+umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower
+that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that
+umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the
+street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated
+arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the
+direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones
+held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones
+held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family
+quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops
+that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of
+confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and
+a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed
+and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,
+dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously
+about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It
+was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few
+shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and
+tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed
+by his coat-tails, and sat down once or twice quite unexpectedly in
+Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let
+the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He
+hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow
+restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.
+
+
+The adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has
+nearly done for Guffin.
+
+Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his
+nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows
+much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.
+
+Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is
+poetic, she is romantic--in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,
+and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion
+with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than
+soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the
+prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money--so far,
+in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts
+it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,
+in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden--Mrs.
+Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no
+place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre
+when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin blighted the future of an
+ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of
+pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite
+fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank--a sort
+of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker
+has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no
+longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future
+porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,
+and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of
+sausages.
+
+The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her
+appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a
+martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.
+They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically
+and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the
+Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most
+vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.
+would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,
+housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,
+donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a
+hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,
+stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning
+to get gray with such orders as--“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval
+noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et
+demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head
+in the straw, and wonder why he was born.
+
+But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame
+aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.
+Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French
+at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told
+him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how
+Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron
+Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter
+performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is
+ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be
+a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell
+on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find
+it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a
+half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin
+can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the
+point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch
+a tent on.
+
+Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and
+when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is
+disappointing.
+
+But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might
+be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very
+much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and
+death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was
+leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against
+her beating heart, the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes
+turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey
+unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to
+squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the
+only seat that could accommodate her--the sofa, and looked as
+consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.
+Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched
+him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself
+wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,
+and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a
+half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or
+less, he broke into rebellion.
+
+“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a
+pig in a nightmare?”
+
+“Pig!” shrieked his wife.
+
+“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.
+
+“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of
+you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”
+
+“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.
+Julia, order the carriage.”
+
+Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl
+responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.
+
+“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”
+
+“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s
+Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you
+have a rasher?”
+
+“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,
+Julia, to quit this abode of--of--this abode of--this maison du diable,
+there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal
+Guffin.
+
+“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be
+in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”
+
+“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up
+la chapeau de mon pere.”
+
+“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.
+And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your
+French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.
+You’ve upset me so much with your d----d rubbishy parley-vooing and
+moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with
+a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if
+you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know
+what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll
+put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front
+door-step all day. D----n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next
+Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll
+begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let
+folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every
+house for two miles around.”
+
+There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their
+French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and
+child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped
+themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes
+out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the
+elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived
+this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is
+so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution
+of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for
+a shutter.
+
+
+
+
+CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]
+
+A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.
+
+
+    Oh! England’s the gem of the waters,
+      The pride of the foam-crested sea!
+    And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters
+      Are always contented and free!
+    Unknown are all want and starvation;
+      Her subjects are strangers to vice;
+    And the bulwarks of this model nation
+      Are Calcraft and Governor Price!
+
+    Wherever this proud nation’s standard
+      Unfurls its red folds to the light,
+    Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard
+      Of freedom, and progress, and right.
+    Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,
+      Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;
+    Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching
+      Of Calcraft and Governor Price!
+
+    From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,
+      Wherever their footsteps have trod,
+    With the aid of the bayonet and cannon
+      They’ve planted the altar of God!
+    And the teachers of heretic notions
+      Have been silent and quiet as mice,
+    For fear they should pay their devotions
+      At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!
+
+    Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter
+      A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?
+    Or breathes there a serf who would mutter
+      A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?
+    If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over
+      With a sound word or two of advice;
+    But if Irish, he soon will discover
+      The logic of Calcraft and Price!
+
+    Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven
+      You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,
+    When, horror! you might have been given
+      A Republican birthright to own!
+    Thank God, that your blood is untainted,
+      You’re subjects of England--how nice!--
+    You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted
+      With Calcraft or Governor Price!
+
+
+
+
+ENTITLED TO A RAISE.
+
+SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.
+
+
+    This is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,
+    To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;
+    When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,
+    And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.
+    And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,
+    Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,
+    His blood was cool--(discipline’s rule)--he made no moan, so he
+    Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.
+
+    This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,
+    But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,
+    He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,
+    And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.
+    He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,
+    He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;
+    He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,
+    So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?
+
+    And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;
+    With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;
+    Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,
+    But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.
+    He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,
+    And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;
+    He is silly, he is loyal,--he is all a Sub should be,
+    With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.
+
+
+
+
+THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.
+
+THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.
+
+
+    John Thompson was a postman who
+      Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,
+    And though not deeply read, ’tis true,
+      Was still a Man of Letters.
+
+    He paid attention to one Kate
+      Maria Julia Jervis,
+    But she did not appreciate
+      John Thompson’s Civil Service.
+
+    Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,
+      Nor let my love-suit fail,
+    Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,
+      And don’t Despatch this Mail.”
+
+    But she replied, in accents grave,
+      “I love you not--decamp!”
+    And when he spoke again--she gave
+      Her foot an Extra Stamp.
+
+    And cried, “My anger you awake,
+      Your speech on insult borders,
+    I’m poor, but I would scorn to take
+      Your vile Post-office Orders.”
+
+    Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,
+      And moaned in accents shivery,
+    “Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,
+      Pray pardon its Delivery.”
+
+    He left the room with footsteps slow,
+      A bitter lesson taught,
+    And then to counteract the blow,
+      A pillar-box he sought.
+
+    He felt how foolish was the tact
+      In courtship he had boasted,
+    And recognized the solemn fact
+      That he was badly Posted.
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.
+
+
+    The cobbler’s always cheerful, though
+      His path of life be crost,
+    He does not tear his hair in woe,
+      Whene’er his all is lost.
+
+    He welts a lot, but not the wife
+      With whom his lot is cast;
+    She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,
+      Still faithful to the last.
+
+    Onward his motto, aye, he strives
+      To grasp some other feat,
+    And in the dullest times contrives
+      Somehow to make ends meet.
+
+    The world may smite him without cause,
+      He never shuns its whacks,
+    And seldom grumbles at the laws
+      That regulate his tax.
+
+    We know but little of the good
+      His many acts reveal--
+    Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would
+      Their understandings heal.
+
+    And a much higher motive yet
+      His generous heart controls,
+    You would not see that saint forget
+      Their perishable souls.
+
+
+
+
+A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.
+
+
+The financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest
+shanty of Jones, in our street.
+
+“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at
+breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with
+the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the
+domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones
+works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t
+say less; he was afraid to say more.
+
+“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”
+
+Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour
+in question.
+
+“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished
+to know where you spent your evening.”
+
+“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a
+kind of a description of--you don’t understand these things, Maria, but
+we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I
+thought--that is, we thought--a few of us thought, you know--a whole lot
+of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand--to--to
+avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”
+
+“Oh, you consulted, then?”
+
+“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we
+decided on a whole lot of things.”
+
+“What time did you decide on breaking up?”
+
+“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish
+financiers--Baron Rothschild, and--and the rest of the Rothschilds, and
+the chief rabbis--and--and--and--all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve
+been working the oracle--and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here
+Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining
+matters as lucidly as was necessary.
+
+“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the
+almshouse before you die, at the rate--the poor rate--you’re going on.
+What else?”
+
+“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the
+monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal
+of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six
+per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things
+have gone so far that, that--”
+
+“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took
+your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the
+scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that
+you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about
+the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the
+proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled
+‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in
+the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians
+and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,
+the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat down in the coal scuttle,
+and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed
+some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried
+to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;
+and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your
+coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,
+you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red
+hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I
+have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for
+five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any
+longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed
+commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a
+remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it
+is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in
+a quiet kitchen in South Boston.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.
+
+
+    Heigho for the morning, murky and dark,
+      When, heedless of threatening cloud,
+    I ventured to visit the green College park,
+      And mingled along with the crowd.
+    I am almost now on insanity’s brink,
+      And this I attribute to
+    Either a fairy attired in pink
+      Or an angel whose robe was blue.
+
+    The world considered my heart was flint,
+      And futile were womanly wiles--
+    Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,
+      Glances and glittering smiles.
+    I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,
+      My journey of life to go through,
+    But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,
+      To say nothing of beauty in blue.
+
+    I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,
+      Bachelor’s buttons and fare;
+    And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife
+      That Benedicts weepingly share.
+    But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink
+      To join the Hymeneal crew,
+    If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink
+      Or a lovely commander in blue.
+
+    I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place
+      For frivolous chatter and talk;
+    I was interested in every race,
+      Jump and hurdle and walk;
+    Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think--
+      Of course it can hardly be true--
+    That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,
+      And the mile by a stayer in blue.
+
+    It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,
+      For I mean in futurity’s days
+    When I go to races to cover my eyes
+      With glasses to temper my gaze,
+    Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink
+      Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,
+    Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink
+      Or equally dangerous blue.
+
+
+
+
+A MUSICAL REVENGE.
+
+
+I’m sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean
+of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is
+oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to
+sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed
+with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,
+and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with
+forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly
+residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly
+utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to
+undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be
+a welcome change.
+
+But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.
+For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers
+of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the
+trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his
+frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a
+fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations
+on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had _one_ night from me. They
+won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.
+
+I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the
+melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of
+his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my
+cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the
+tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising
+for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed
+successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured
+the presence of a fife and drum--principally drum--band from a Grand
+Army post.
+
+The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time
+all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to
+quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants
+of the disturbed district.
+
+But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the
+perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,
+till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or
+instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering
+locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,
+as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each
+artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The
+bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if
+all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s
+interference with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”
+with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled
+like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had
+never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The
+melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band
+wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of
+its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice
+assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of
+the occasion.
+
+It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division
+of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at
+suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand
+finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within
+half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a
+lifetime.
+
+If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them
+another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.
+
+
+
+
+A LIAR LAID OUT.
+
+
+We have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who
+certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give
+weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London
+_Times_ in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The
+whoppers that spreader of lies and light can tell would raise the hair
+on the head of an Egyptian mummy.
+
+But he met his match last week.
+
+I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an
+acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of
+course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing
+and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my
+friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that
+he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the
+truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in
+him--very much in him--it’s impossible to get it out of him.
+
+I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I
+regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future
+member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all
+there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that
+Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured
+it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the
+Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.
+
+The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a
+strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen
+from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him
+at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden
+legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was
+smoking it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of
+teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the
+regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own
+gums. He showed it to Dipps.
+
+I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He
+exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured
+out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of
+the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,
+a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express
+purpose of making that stick.
+
+The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had
+another walking-stick at home--made out of the thigh bone of the
+engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to
+carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and
+would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising
+from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler
+in cold weather to warm himself.
+
+Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be
+put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He
+called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the
+centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a
+diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was
+worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic
+shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It had passed into Dipps’s
+hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first
+met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel
+Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say
+anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if
+you’re able.”
+
+Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t
+squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary--it was
+almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a
+companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the
+assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been
+divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,
+and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.
+
+“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom
+Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent
+of the New York _Herald_ Central African tourist pumped that saline
+particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling
+in the interest which it must inspire.”
+
+“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,
+that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic
+treasure?”
+
+“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the
+Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he
+embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley
+_didn’t_ shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.”
+
+
+
+
+MULROONEY.--A TROOPER’S TALE.
+
+
+    We were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;
+    When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;
+    When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades
+    Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.
+    We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;
+    Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung--
+    For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,
+    The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!
+
+    Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;
+    The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;
+    His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;
+    His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.
+    So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,
+    Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;
+    Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try
+    To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.”
+
+    Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,
+    His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;
+    The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,
+    The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;
+    His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command--
+    A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;
+    But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why
+    Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”
+
+    The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led
+    Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;
+    But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,
+    A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!
+    Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair--
+    One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,
+    Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:
+    “By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!”
+
+    But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,
+    There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;
+    The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,
+    As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!
+    One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,
+    A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,
+    And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,
+    A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”
+
+    Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,
+    The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,
+    And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,
+    Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.
+    The captain played his cards with skill--his triumph almost came;
+    But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;
+    And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh
+    Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish newspapers, was
+debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich comic cartoons in
+_Pat_, the _Weekly News_, the _Weekly Freeman_, and _United Ireland_.
+
+[B] Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the Ribbon or
+Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.
+
+[C] During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the Speaker
+or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside for
+twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the
+course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every
+five minutes or so.
+
+[D] Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester, England, for
+their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy, two Fenian
+leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies being refused
+to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the occasion of a
+demonstration.
+
+[E] On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and Michael
+Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two Fenian
+leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into effect
+it was not believed that the first political execution since that of
+Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old Swan
+Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger
+brought news of the execution instead.
+
+[F] Allen--nineteen years old.
+
+[G] O’Brien--A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s Irish
+Brigade.
+
+[H] Larkin--An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.
+
+[I] At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on Jan.
+23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished themselves
+by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.
+
+[J] In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Ireland. On the
+morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses above was found
+posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of Ireland. The
+poem had previously appeared in an American paper.
+
+[K] A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after he had
+been executed.
+
+[L] Give me a kiss.
+
+[M] Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a British
+jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be
+remembered for years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Irish Crazy-Quilt, by Arthur M. Forrester
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: An Irish Crazy-Quilt
+
+Author: Arthur M. Forrester
+
+Release Date: May 20, 2020 [EBook #62180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sonya Schermann, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="c">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="317" height="500" alt="" />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">An Irish Crazy-Quilt.</span></h1>
+
+<p class="c">SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO
+SONG AND STORY.<br /><br /><br /><small>BY</small><br />
+ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br /><br />
+
+BOSTON:<br />
+ALFRED MUDGE &amp; SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.<br />
+1891.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Copyright,<br />
+1890,<br />
+By</span> ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.<br /><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span>&nbsp;<br /><br /><br />
+
+TO THE<br />
+<br />
+“FELONS” OF IRELAND,<br />
+<br />
+THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Who have been Exiled or Imprisoned or Executed</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Because they Loved their Native Land more than<br />
+Home or Liberty or Life</span>,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="eng">This Volume</span><br />
+<br />
+IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><th colspan="2">SONGS AND BALLADS.</th></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="rt"><span class="smcap"><small>Page.</small></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE">The Church of Ballymore</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_OLD_BOREEN">The Old Boreen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE">The Irish Schoolhouse</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PAT_MURPHYS_COWS">Pat Murphy’s Cows</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FATHER_TOM_MALONE">Father Tom Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#YOU_CAN_GUESS">You Can Guess</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONLY">Only!</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL">Songs of Innisfail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE">The Lord of Kenmare</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE">An Old Irish Tune</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY">Ivan Petrokoffsky</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_EMPERORS_RING">The Emperor’s Ring</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_54">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BLACK_LORIS">Black Loris</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_RED-HEART_DAISY">The Red Heart Daisy</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING">The Tide is Turning</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_OWN_AGAIN">Our Own Again</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL">The Tale of a Tail</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS">The Seasick Sub-Commissioners</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY">Clare Constabulary Caione</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX">Clause Twenty-six</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JENKINS_M_P">Jenkins, M. P.</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THADY_MALONE">Thady Malone</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RORYS_REVERIE">Rory’s Reverie</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE">Our Land Shall be Free</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND">The Felons of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION">An Official Valuation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER">A Bewildered Boycotter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION">A Complaint of Coercion</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ONEILLS_ADDRESS">O’Neil’s Address (Benburb)</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FENIANS_DREAM">The Fenian’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT">The Speaker’s Complaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ERIN_MACHREE_1798">Erin Machree</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOURS_WISH">Balfour’s Wish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#OUR_CAUSE">Our Cause</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SERVED_HIM_RIGHT">Served Him Right</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RAPPAREE_SONG">Rapparee Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND">To the Landlords of Ireland</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#BALFOUR_REJOICES">Balfour Rejoices</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_BRIGADE">The Irish Brigade</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST">Faithful to the Last</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG">Fenian Battle Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS">The Grave of the Martyrs</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#DEATHS_VICTORY">Death’s Victory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG">The Green Flag at Fredericksburg</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND">The Flag of Our Land</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_162">162</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY">Hurrah for Liberty</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MESSENGER">The Messenger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN">John Bull’s Appeal</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB">The Story of a Bomb</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_177">177</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM">Avenging, Though Dim</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885">Christmas Dirge of London Police</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885">Ireland’s Prayer</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR">John Bull’s New Year</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#READY_AND_STEADY">Ready and Steady</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI">The Charge of the Guards</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES">An Address to Slaves</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION">The Lion’s Lamentation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MEMORIAL_ODE">Memorial Ode to Irish Dead</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL">Song of King Alcohol</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONTRARY_COGNOMENS">Contrary Cognomens</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_210">210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING">An Æsthetic Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM">The Drunkard’s Dream</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CONSTABLE_X">Constable X</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LUCIFERS_LABORATORY">Lucifer’s Laboratory</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_223">223</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN">The Monopolist’s Moan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS">With the Grand Army Veterans</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE">The Irish Soldier at Grant’s Grave</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MAINE_AND_MAYO">Maine and Mayo</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE">The Priest with the Brogue</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_238">238</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ARAB_WAR_SONG">Arab War Song</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY">The Linguist of the Liffey</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PEGGY_OSHEA">Peggy O’Shea</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT">The Boston Carrier’s Plaint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_253">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN">New England’s Marksmen</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE">Calcraft and Price</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_270">270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE">Entitled to a Raise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_272">272</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THE_POSTMANS_WOOING">The Postman’s Wooing</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER">Sonnets to a Shoemaker</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_275">275</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS">At the College Sports</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_278">278</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE">Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_286">286</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><th colspan="2">STORIES AND SKETCHES.</th></tr>
+
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#TAMING_A_TIGER">Taming a Tiger</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#RYANS_REVENGE">Ryan’s Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HARVEY_DUFF">Harvey Duff</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE">A Seditious Slide</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT">Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat?</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE">A Double Surprise</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#PHILIPSONS_PARTY">Philipson’s Party</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS">That Traitor Timmins</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER">A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#SNOOKS">Snooks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS">Caledonian Candlesticks</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_TYPICAL_TRIAL">A Typical Trial</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED">Why Smithers Resigned</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER">Exploits of an Irish Reporter</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED">A Political Lesson Spoiled</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#AN_ORANGE_ORATION">An Orange Oration</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#FREDERICKS_FOLLY">Frederick’s Folly</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH">A Sandy Row Skirmish</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK">Hobbies in Our Block</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_241">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN">Not a John L. Sullivan</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA">A Windy Day at Cabra</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS">Apropos of the Census</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN">A Mixed Antiquarian</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_261">261</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#JONESS_UMBRELLA">Jones’s Umbrella</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA">Lessons in the French Drama</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS">A Commercial Crisis</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_MUSICAL_REVENGE">A Musical Revenge</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_280">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#A_LIAR_LAID_OUT">A Liar Laid Out</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_282">282</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span>&nbsp; </p>
+
+<h1>AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE" id="THE_CHURCH_OF_BALLYMORE"></a>THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though the roof above its worshippers was low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s&mdash;by the feet of monarchs trod&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With their monumental genius and their lore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In accents that we might not understand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As to think his words not heaven’s own command!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each little modest slab and grassy mound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Desolation was about me, sad and sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am proud of our cathedrals&mdash;they are emblems of our love<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The devil should not have them as his own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their splendor has inspired me&mdash;but amidst it all I prayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_OLD_BOREEN" id="THE_OLD_BOREEN"></a>THE OLD BOREEN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">E</span>MBROIDERED with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It laughed with my joy&mdash;in my moments of sadness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What solace I found in its pitying shade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With sickness and want I have earned only scars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life’s twilight is nearing&mdash;its day disappearing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE" id="AN_IRISH_SCHOOLHOUSE"></a>AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">U</span>PON the rugged ladder rungs&mdash;whose pinnacle is Fame&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Perhaps&mdash;and yet ’tis hard to think&mdash;our boastful modern school<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would scorn his simple ways&mdash;and in the rapid march of mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS" id="PAT_MURPHYS_COWS"></a>PAT MURPHY’S COWS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary
+Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to
+the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited
+roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat
+Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less
+than eleven children.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>N a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole&mdash;a pair of Kerry cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FATHER_TOM_MALONE" id="FATHER_TOM_MALONE"></a>FATHER TOM MALONE.<br /><br />
+<small>A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>AIR white as innocence, that crowned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gentle face which never frowned;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lips framed to counsel and to bless;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A reflex of our native skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through which now tears, now sunshine shone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There you have Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He bade the infant at its birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Cead mille failthe</i> to the earth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With friendly hand he guided youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the thorny track of truth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dying felt, yet knew not why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nearer to Heaven when he was by&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, sure, the angels at God’s throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were friends of Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For us, poor simple sons of toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our one ambition, sole content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to be backward with the rent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our one absorbing, constant fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The agent’s visits twice a year;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had, our hardships to atone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love of Father Tom Malone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One season failed. The dull earth slept.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Despite of ceaseless vigil kept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sign of crop, day after day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To coax it from the sullen clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tubers rotted&mdash;then, oh, shame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We&mdash;’twas the last time ever known&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We had, from fruitful years before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Garnered with care a frugal store;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What were our babes to live upon?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had no seed for coming spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor faintest hope to which to cling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We would have starved without a moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When out spoke Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His voice, so flute-like in the past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“God’s wondrous love doth not intend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hundreds to starve that one may spend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That</i> from mild Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the landlord with a force<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of English soldiers, foot and horse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came down and direst vengeance swore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who met him at the cabin door?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who reasoned first and then defied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thief in all his power and pride?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who won the poor man’s fight alone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, when you point to heroes’ scars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And boast their prowess in the wars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give one small meed of praise, at least,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this poor modest Irish priest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No laurel wreath was twined for him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But pulses throb and eyelids dim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="YOU_CAN_GUESS" id="YOU_CAN_GUESS"></a>YOU CAN GUESS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I first met my fate,&mdash;what it was you can guess.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was under the shade of its bordering trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet it was but a short question to ask.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the question was this&mdash;but I’m sure you can guess.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ONLY" id="ONLY"></a>ONLY!</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NLY a cabin, thatched and gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Only a rose-twined door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a barefooted child at play<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On only an earthern floor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a little brain&mdash;not wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For even a head so small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that is the reason he bitterly cries<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For leaving his home&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only the thought of her girlhood there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And her happier days as wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have endeared them to her for life;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the weeping woman’s cause?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Why are her accents gall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What does she know of our intricate laws?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It was only a hut&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That man with the eyelids dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For sinewy serfs like him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For his heart such a wondrous thrall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He was born in the place&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The years have gone, and the worn-out pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sleep under the stranger’s clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the weeping child with the curly hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is a brave, strong man to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still he thinks of the olden land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And prays for her tyrant’s fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And longs to be one of some chosen band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With only a chance&mdash;that’s all.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL" id="SONGS_OF_INNISFAIL"></a>SONGS OF INNISFAIL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE the Austral river rushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through feathery heath and bushes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through its gurgles and its gushes<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You may hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To your wonder and surprise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet melodies arise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have heard ’neath other skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Low and clear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! within the gold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange to you and cold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voices from the old land<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Swell upon the gale<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lyrics of the story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lit with flames of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dimmed with pages gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where Mississippi leaping<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through valleys fair, is sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the fields of nodding grain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On some mountain path or plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rings a stirring old refrain<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fresh and free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! where’er we wander<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Irish hearts will ponder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er our land, and fonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Throb with ev’ry tale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the home that bore us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the new skies o’er us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Echo with our chorus<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the spray-foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereso’er we may roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughts of far-away home<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Linger still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in dreams we see again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Babbling stream and silent glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forest green and lonely fen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Vale and hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! our hearts’ devotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flies across the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While with deep emotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sternest features pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As around us stealing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softened by sad feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the air are pealing<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Songs of Innisfail!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="TAMING_A_TIGER" id="TAMING_A_TIGER"></a>TAMING A TIGER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,
+Dublin,&mdash;five of us&mdash;a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.</p>
+
+<p>There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the
+representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay
+amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,
+who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke &amp; Brassey; Tim
+Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing
+stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a
+distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical
+jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome
+kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 <small>A.M.</small> train
+south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance
+of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was
+attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid
+indi<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span>vidual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally
+irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.</p>
+
+<p>“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the
+newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way
+from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks
+we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would
+ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a
+little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him
+out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of
+the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take
+whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me
+see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick
+Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this
+Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and
+Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each
+of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,
+and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,
+will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he
+must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my
+sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What
+do you say, boys?”</p>
+
+<p>Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand
+in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the
+major into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed
+rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the
+compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in
+Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping
+Harry,&mdash;delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble
+servant).</p>
+
+<p>At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all
+manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished
+off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to
+the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,
+swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had
+pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout
+to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe
+Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,
+and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!
+the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now
+the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.</p>
+
+<p>He had killed a panther with his naked hands&mdash;with one naked hand, in
+fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in
+desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its
+tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s
+spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and
+he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior
+recesses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> He tore its heart out, sir,&mdash;its heart,&mdash;and an assortment of
+lungs and ribs and other things.</p>
+
+<p>He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello
+crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his
+waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He
+never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.</p>
+
+<p>At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,
+and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we
+managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that&mdash;down
+in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a
+fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled
+twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized
+atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing
+dumb, my name’s not Boomerang&mdash;Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the
+peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,
+for instance.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach
+of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,&mdash;flay him alive,
+sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember
+Joe Boomerang&mdash;fighting Joe&mdash;as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild
+elephants! I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,
+the&mdash;the&mdash;by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”</p>
+
+<p>Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,
+and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am
+the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your
+abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally
+concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I
+suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will
+oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an
+officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you
+have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”</p>
+
+<p>We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform
+and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like
+an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but
+his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I
+cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D&mdash;&mdash; me, if I will!”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not
+a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with
+perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for
+you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with
+pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him
+in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the
+bullet? People said, you know,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span> that it was the doctors and not Davitt
+that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.</p>
+
+<p>The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man
+in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man
+already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not
+going to be killed&mdash;I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not
+going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as
+if they were snipe.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of
+the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith
+did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting
+Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively
+blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for
+the honor of the service.”</p>
+
+<p>“The service be d&mdash;&mdash;d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a
+kaleidoscope of colors&mdash;red, purple, blue, yellow, and white&mdash;were
+flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like
+this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a
+different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his
+courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead
+of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had
+ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,
+sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them
+that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a light<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span>ning glance
+from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and
+winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar
+and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;
+and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb
+from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”</p>
+
+<p>Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,
+and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a
+cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.
+I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I
+shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that
+I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you
+must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you
+to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The
+prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had
+disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.
+Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone
+got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed
+to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,
+he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he
+has always chosen that so far.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such
+horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing
+outright.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has he&mdash;has he&mdash;I’m not afraid, you know&mdash;ha! ha! Joe Boomerang
+afraid&mdash;capital joke&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;has he killed anybody?”</p>
+
+<p>“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him
+personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,
+matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The
+major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I
+continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both
+pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.
+You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It
+will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,
+but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere
+with my duty.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that&mdash;that&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the
+best. I know an undertaker in Cork&mdash;a decent sort of a chap. We can
+arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the
+first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me
+sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what
+alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I
+remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major
+managed to get hold of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span> enough of his voice to inquire how it came to
+pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as
+duelling.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western
+institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in
+deference to Yankee ideas.”</p>
+
+<p>“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we
+would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang
+of&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the
+car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife
+clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish
+determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter
+collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.
+“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot
+that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and
+glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of
+America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to
+the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m
+bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the
+Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I
+squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the
+blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,
+sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a
+Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span>snub-nosed,
+curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.
+Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena
+from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge
+forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that
+seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made
+a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,
+but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told
+him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,
+having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed
+staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered
+that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for
+his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at
+the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to
+Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.</p>
+
+<p>“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that
+gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to
+Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him
+this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he
+booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’
+thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since
+the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at
+the ould cross roads.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span>” A few days after I read this announcement in the
+Dublin <i>Gazette</i>: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the
+humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident
+magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly
+return to Bengal.”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE" id="THE_LORD_OF_KENMARE"></a>THE LORD OF KENMARE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were&mdash;the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="RYANS_REVENGE" id="RYANS_REVENGE"></a>RYAN’S REVENGE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">D</span>URING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most
+exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement
+articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the
+post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,
+for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect
+“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This
+peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional
+association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was
+popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been
+introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain
+refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,
+Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the
+government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the
+indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions
+that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,
+subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span> adopt his invention when they
+had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the
+<i>status quo</i> was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,
+English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his
+reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office
+pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that
+nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.</p>
+
+<p>The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that
+Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical
+visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence
+in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of
+his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted
+county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a
+Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than
+turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof
+that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.
+So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.</p>
+
+<p>For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to
+get muddled,&mdash;his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the
+spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented <i>billet-doux</i> from
+that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue
+envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna
+to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an
+envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes
+being found to contain nothing at all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with
+the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy
+for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent
+sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that
+euphonious cognomen.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state
+indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw
+a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You
+couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.
+If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or
+individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was
+a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the
+shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy
+for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress
+suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good
+harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were
+thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of
+as a blight among the Murphys.</p>
+
+<p>So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed
+to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,
+it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,
+the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central
+bureau of the postal pimpdom. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span> took the clan Murphy into his
+confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy
+in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the
+fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went
+forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many
+letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could
+put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,&mdash;the crops, the
+weather, the price of provisions,&mdash;anything, in fact, or nothing at all.
+The language was of minor importance,&mdash;Irish, however, preferred,&mdash;and
+the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The first day of the interception of <i>the</i> Murphy’s letters, three bags
+full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s
+private sanctum with spare bags.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy
+letters on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking
+Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters
+for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the
+grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to
+the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or
+hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the
+general chaos.</p>
+
+<p>The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service
+Corps, and from 8 <small>A.M.</small> till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were
+blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs
+and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated
+protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for
+Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War
+Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey
+quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the
+intercepted epistles in.</p>
+
+<p>Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,&mdash;the order to
+overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would
+have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the
+task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was
+relieved.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy
+correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed
+to the treacherous waves.</p>
+
+<p>To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up
+a thousand leagues from land,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span> on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir
+William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a
+week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the
+gout.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE" id="AN_OLD_IRISH_TUNE"></a>AN OLD IRISH TUNE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over the dreams of the slumberers cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The magical spell of a voice from the past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once again in old homes we were children at play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never a ball on its death-mission sped;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It linked with its strains ere they melted away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air seemed to throb with invisible tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HARVEY_DUFF" id="HARVEY_DUFF"></a>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible
+to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the
+different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes
+or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span> of Hamelin.
+“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;
+“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment
+before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
+will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the
+living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself
+a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles
+of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five
+minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because
+he has been killed in the lump.</p>
+
+<p>But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers
+existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is
+none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced
+upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished
+in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican
+convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a
+trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling
+outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but
+if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain
+tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,
+dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,
+hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take
+a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of
+mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will
+amply repay the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span> journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be
+anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well
+to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest
+you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky
+enough to go to hospital.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The
+performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its
+composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated
+with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the
+authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories
+and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”</p>
+
+<p>There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server
+and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular
+“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled
+in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place
+as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally
+difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the
+melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has
+been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to
+submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied
+experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”
+for thirty seconds.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told
+that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years,
+returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor
+jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious
+to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time
+to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the
+back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a
+knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the
+harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in
+the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.</p>
+
+<p>In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed
+little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an
+escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables,
+and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the
+aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small
+and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle
+something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before
+the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s
+Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and
+bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant,
+without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old
+rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen
+might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their
+mouths and their souls in their boots,&mdash;that is, if an Irish policeman
+has either a heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard
+both along with their civilian clothes.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the
+dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic
+entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him
+in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He
+was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer
+was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were
+attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable,
+pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man
+aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the
+atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to
+capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo.
+Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst
+penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade
+of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that
+strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,”
+and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an
+avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told
+Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the
+passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the
+ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air,
+twirling and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span> twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon
+the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the
+atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when
+the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the
+crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering
+at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he
+could recover his breath.</p>
+
+<p>I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its
+obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the
+ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and
+it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines
+to that immaculate body:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h3>“HARVEY DUFF.”</h3>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">M</span>Y load of woes is hard to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m losing flesh with dark despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the top of my head is so awfully bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It isn’t worth while to dye my hair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would you the cause be after knowing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That makes me the baldest peeler going,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">If I’ve not heard you often enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I was once with a bailiff serving writs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My skull was cracked to spoil my wits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mob malafoostered me for him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the case that circles my brain is thick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It cannot be damaged by stone or stick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When duty has called me miles away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would give me a sandwich or pint of X.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I couldn’t coax dry bread and water<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From father or son, from mother or daughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I always could reckon on more than enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Of you I get more than <i>quantum suff</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And would to the Lord I could collar the muff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To go alone to rebel Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a reckless spirit dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To take a farm that’s vacant there.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know the peasants bold would scatter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My four bones to the wind&mdash;no matter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They’d wake me decent&mdash;no heart so tough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I wipe my eyes upon my cuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">As I think that my soul will depart in a huff<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE" id="A_SEDITIOUS_SLIDE"></a>A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and
+Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy
+has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have
+been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot
+of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged
+Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly
+thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts
+on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at
+present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and
+happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.</p>
+
+<p>I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings
+in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never
+did any<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span>thing so low or ignoble as to <i>work</i> for their country, and are,
+consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big
+pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the
+refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by
+jingo when we do!”</p>
+
+<p>On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and
+unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the
+heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty
+miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing
+triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the
+Milky Way.</p>
+
+<p>Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of
+an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few
+front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.</p>
+
+<p>I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty
+feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous
+juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving
+that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t
+have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of
+Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to
+either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been
+organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a
+National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through
+my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.</p>
+
+<p>But it is strange how the misfortunes of others recon<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span>cile us to our
+own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my
+soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw
+approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair
+Araminta Higgins.</p>
+
+<p>They were mashing.</p>
+
+<p>He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash,
+preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his
+suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering,
+and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.</p>
+
+<p>“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true
+to thee as&mdash;as&mdash;as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole.
+I am thine&mdash;thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”</p>
+
+<p>At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet
+and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward
+a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane
+observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he
+supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish
+blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a
+coarse laugh.</p>
+
+<p>They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign
+spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two
+prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the
+direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were
+energetically discussing the Na<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span>tional League campaign in Ulster. They
+neared the precipice&mdash;I mean the slide.</p>
+
+<p>“This Parnellite invasion will fail&mdash;utterly fail&mdash;if we remain firm,”
+said the taller of the two, Col. K&mdash;H&mdash;. “Unity and perseverance must be
+our watchwords. United we stand&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head
+rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his
+desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the
+soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted
+energies.</p>
+
+<p>The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known
+attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to
+discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N.
+looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in
+every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were
+veritable embodiments of <i>fieri-facias</i>; his stiff, angular collar had
+the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he
+carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and
+processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping
+briskly to destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a
+bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that
+atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal
+documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored
+ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got
+home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking
+for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a
+bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was
+filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.</p>
+
+<p>When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was
+continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the
+North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his
+reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done
+the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”</p>
+
+<p>And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was
+brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the
+policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault
+over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly
+round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the
+policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had
+got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had
+been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and
+constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.</p>
+
+<p>But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we
+going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls
+and chasms to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span> be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs,
+and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes?
+It’s awful!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY" id="IVAN_PETROKOFFSKY"></a>IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>VAN Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is a private&mdash;nothing more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of dying for his country to be happy or content.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_EMPERORS_RING" id="THE_EMPERORS_RING"></a>THE EMPEROR’S RING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sentinel checks his monotonous round.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fresh horse and new pistols&mdash;some phrases of warning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out, out through the forests&mdash;on, on o’er the meadows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While castle and cabin and hamlet and town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor ocean a sheltering island so far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We Russians are brave, but we only are human;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We cower at a power it is death to offend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="BLACK_LORIS" id="BLACK_LORIS"></a>BLACK LORIS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>PURS jingle and lances shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hundred brave horsemen in line;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For why should true hearts repine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pathway is level and balmy the air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sun has but reached its meridian height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten heroes fight back to back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wolf from the howling pack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the yelping curs in myriads swarm!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ten are scattered; they seem to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like derelict spars in an angry sea.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But never a Cossack was known to yield<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While his arm a lance or sabre could wield.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, weep their valor by distant Don,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves are engulphing them one by one!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But two remain back to back!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His comrade sinks down with a groan&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black Loris is fighting alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his arms as heavy as stone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For answer he sabres the chief of the band.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But his arm is shivered in twain&mdash;he feels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth swim round him&mdash;he gasps, he reels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gleam on his vision old scenes afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Black Loris is not alone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No tears for the ninety-nine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The nation’s heart is their shrine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the one man left of the line!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Don’s deep waters will long be dried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The strength and glory of Russia depart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of dashing Loris who fought so well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose comrades tore him from out the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for years to come, when trotting along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ural and Don, men will sing this song&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">“The One and the Ninety-Nine!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT" id="WHO_SHOT_PHLYNNS_HAT"></a>WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?</h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">M</span>R. PHINEAS PHLYNN, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish
+estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic
+nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous
+functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and
+less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by
+his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the
+abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to
+his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his
+neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy
+man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was
+only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed
+property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits
+included an addiction to French<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> wines and Irish whiskey, a decided
+inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures
+at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into
+frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger
+percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.</p>
+
+<p>But how was it to be done?</p>
+
+<p>He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry
+had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in
+mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and
+the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land
+League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master
+about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he
+described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his
+gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious
+bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks
+deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But
+the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr.
+Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a
+repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have
+their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console
+Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his
+fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t
+enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant
+degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent
+to guess<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal
+forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a
+crisis. There should be an outrage&mdash;a sanguinary, blood-curdling
+outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent
+carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least
+eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual
+peril.</p>
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion
+of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself&mdash;at least, he shot his
+own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this
+horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact
+that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s
+hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was
+in it or not&mdash;really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so
+tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly
+inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such
+objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat
+on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police
+barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and
+the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his
+dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his
+revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence
+of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforemen<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span>tioned, and poured
+into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of
+his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had
+fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his
+head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!</p>
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country
+was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The
+revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale.
+The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the
+government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized
+community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages
+of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information
+that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an
+exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively
+kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes&mdash;a feat
+unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir
+and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown
+had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For
+nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it
+was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence
+given to him as the em<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span>ployer of an Irish agent who had been fired at,
+that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to
+get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would
+become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition
+permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his
+outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London
+detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the
+event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher,
+Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day,
+Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine
+bargains, left London for Leitrim.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with
+the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of
+the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same
+neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.</p>
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he
+could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work
+of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident
+that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because
+every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been
+arrested, and established their innocence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span> The foreigner who had failed
+would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents
+loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced
+that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking
+measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector
+Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest
+both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names
+of Jones and Brennan.</p>
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong
+reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where is he?” queried Phineas.</p>
+
+<p>“Here.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for
+revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where,
+when, why, how&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am
+Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been
+commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> I’ve fished. I
+may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant
+for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and
+whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and
+at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police
+there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve
+trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare&mdash;I have him,
+I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins
+departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the
+unconscious Crawley.</p>
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant
+for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas
+Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no
+time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant
+Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in
+accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in
+Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.</p>
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and
+about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of
+Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span>
+tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy,
+too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight.
+If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head
+Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the
+Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion,
+if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I
+whistled for them.”</p>
+
+<p>It was so arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel,
+describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three
+official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened
+and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep
+consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to
+himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding
+the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand
+and the warrant fluttering in his left.</p>
+
+<p>“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he
+ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at
+him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables
+grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a
+racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip
+off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and
+deposit<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span>ing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a
+shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire
+with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to
+receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by
+Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was
+carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells
+and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers
+charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they
+splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred
+skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the
+hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned
+each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms
+and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their
+Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner.
+Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among
+the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the
+entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal
+production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully
+unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian
+crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s
+hat.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY" id="THE_RED-HEART_DAISY"></a>THE RED-HEART DAISY.<br /><br />
+<small>A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The storm of wrath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And in its path<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In quivering bodies and distorted faces.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Among the bloody drift of dead and dying<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That strewed the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The searchers found.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some essence from the forms interred together<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Enriched the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">’Neath which they lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough hide and dainty skin&mdash;deep brain and hollow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silver and iron&mdash;Vulcan and Apollo.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The mountain’s crest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Among the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span>
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Those who would make our land a frame of metal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With jewelled heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As thing apart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING" id="THE_TIDE_IS_TURNING"></a>THE TIDE IS TURNING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, masters who have ruled so long<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With cruel rods of iron,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who sought with gyves and fetters strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our freedom to environ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In plenitude of sullen power<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our tearful pleadings spurning:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prepare ye for your fated hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beware&mdash;the tide is turning!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! at last we fling the past<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">With all its woes behind us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And stand to-day in firm array<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Against the bonds that bind us.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With brutal grip of tyrant hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye choked our aspirations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made our fertile motherland<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Niobe of nations;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feed the vices of your lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ye stole the people’s earning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And held the theft with hireling swords&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But now the tide is turning!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Is tottering to ruin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The Irish race a future face<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">That will not harbor you in!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye kept us chained to ignorance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In fear that education<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might teach our brains the wisest chance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To liberate the nation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, spite of all your guile and thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our people still are learning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What most will tend your yoke to rend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And so the tide is turning.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Each rusty chain is breaking;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The portents smile upon our isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">For Ireland is awaking.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From meadows rich of smooth Kildare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To frowning crags of Kerry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From ocean-girdled shores of Clare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To busy marts of Derry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In our opprest, north, south, east, west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A newer spirit’s burning&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The conquering fire of brave desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That tells the tide is turning.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The light at last is blazing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Till on our brow no serf-brand now<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Can chill a friendly gazing.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_OWN_AGAIN" id="OUR_OWN_AGAIN"></a>OUR OWN AGAIN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE voice of freedom’s sounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From farthest shore to shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Erin’s pulse is bounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With manhood’s blood once more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our sluggard trance is broken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We stand erect as men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our stern demand is spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No futile bribes can stay us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No traitor chiefs control,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wheedling tones delay us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No terrors blanch our soul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gloomy hour has vanished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And gone forever when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We could be crushed or banished&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bluster of the Tories,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Whigdom’s tempting lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are vain and foolish stories<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We spurn and we despise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve torn the landlord foeman<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From out his reeking den,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now we’ll halt for no man&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our eyes are lifted sunward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No power can bar our course,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our march must still be onward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spite either guile or force;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be it by the sabre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The voice, the vote, or pen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or steadfast, patient labor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll have our own again!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL" id="THE_TALE_OF_A_TAIL"></a>THE TALE OF A TAIL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE’S a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the time for speech was past&mdash;the knife was mightier than the pen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS" id="THE_SEA-SICK_SUB-COMMISSIONERS"></a>THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during
+the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of
+the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on
+the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,
+in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island
+was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for
+over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land
+Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?
+Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.
+The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible
+to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses
+record the exploit:]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With due responsibility on each official breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That their unexpected <i>dejeuner</i> was owing to the Act.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although alternate intervals were taken to allow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY" id="CAOINE_OF_THE_CLARE_CONSTABULARY"></a>CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ existence will become a dreary void;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall we revel in our customary fun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of scaring all the humble women folk<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ life by common people be enjoyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But we didn’t think you positively cruel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX" id="CLAUSE_TWENTY-SIX"></a>CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.<br /><br />
+<small>(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For struggling poor sowls like myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To brighten our dreary existence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ even to gather some pelf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a land where the soil is but waitin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from the strings of my life&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the spot where my mother lies buried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The place where I coorted my wife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My conscience remorsefully pricks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When my luck like a stranger goes by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When blight settles down on the praties,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I curse you, misfortune so cruel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And often at night I’ve a notion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that plintiful land o’er the ocean<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They might even an odd pat of butther<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Along with their stirabout mix;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, my heart is too full for to utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To see the health-roses assimble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the innocent laugh of my girls;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="JENKINS_M_P" id="JENKINS_M_P"></a>JENKINS, M. P.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To address the electors he’d soothered before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he found in their feelings toward him a change,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as it was freezing it needn’t be told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THADY_MALONE" id="THADY_MALONE"></a>THADY MALONE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH for our tight little, bright little nation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Were once we united<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Our wrongs should be righted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But still some intraygur,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Or bastely renayger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Yet, no matter, we’ve planned<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A divarsion so grand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And the rogue who’ll consent<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">To contribute rack rint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">For his wife wint away<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">On the very next day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ sisters and cousins<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Departed in dozens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Why, sorra a doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Sure, the fire it wint out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Till he felt that the rint<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Had been badly ill-spint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The sparrows, diminted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Grew quite discontinted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The pigs tuk to fittin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ hins that were sittin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A polis inspector,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A taxes collector,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ there now he’s stuck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Without hope, grace, or luck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> <a name="RORYS_REVERIE" id="RORYS_REVERIE"></a>RORY’S REVERIE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ they must know&mdash;the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging hotly round),&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She kissed me ere she sank to rest&mdash;I’d think it sin just now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I mustn’t think of this&mdash;No! no! for Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My child&mdash;but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m shakin’ like an aspen&mdash;Faugh! I can’t afford to spend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE" id="A_DOUBLE_SURPRISE"></a>A DOUBLE SURPRISE.</h2>
+
+<h3>I.<br /><br />
+GALLAGHER’S GOOSE.</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">C</span>ONSTABLE Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, was in charge of the
+Ballyblank Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail
+to discover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, but Constable
+Gallagher’s prototypes abound in every county of the island. He was
+tall, straight, stiff, red-complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important,
+and imbued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and Constitution
+which has deprived the Irish constabulary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span> of all the ordinary feelings
+of weak humanity. He would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a
+riotous peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or a
+recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent seizure. Where he was
+born, who were his parents, what had been his history before he was
+evolved from the depot in Phœnix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in
+dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying eyes, that rested
+suspiciously and lingered long on every unaccustomed object not familiar
+to his code of instructions and mode of training&mdash;these were mysteries
+known only to himself, and possibly to the Director-General. The
+physiognomists of the quiet village of Ballyblank, a few of his own
+limited command, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one Harry
+McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dissecting rooms of the
+metropolis, professed to trace a striking resemblance between the
+somewhat rugged contour of his countenance and that of the one man in
+the parish who disputed unpopularity with him&mdash;George Macgrabb, J. P.,
+the agent of Lord Clonboy, the scourge of the district, the terror of
+its toilers, and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles
+around.</p>
+
+<p>Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities marked the two
+despots of the country side or not, their mental and moral&mdash;or
+immoral&mdash;characteristics had drawn them closely together. It was on the
+recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher had been appointed to
+the command of that station. It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P.,
+that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span> chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a question
+about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the part of the constable,
+which had led that ardent enthusiast in the cause of law and order to
+direct a fusillade upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were
+supposed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of “God Save
+Ireland.” The sapient secretary declared that the lives of the police
+were threatened, and the English members cheered the heroism of the
+constabulary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the toddling crowd.
+Above and beyond all, this December, Macgrabb had shown, not only his
+magisterial approval of the constable as an official, but his interest
+in him as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of the month he
+had sent to Gallagher a goose.</p>
+
+<p>“You are among strangers, Constable,” he said; “and the unfortunate
+feeling of disloyalty which pervades this county might reduce you to
+rougher fare than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time.
+Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten it, and invite your
+comrades to partake of the hospitable cheer it may afford.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, whether the early associations of that goose with the stingy and
+miserly household of the agent had accustomed it to a peculiar dietary,
+or that its depraved appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the
+gastronomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher’s custodianship
+are preserved among the most glowing traditions of the force. He tried
+to fatten it, as per invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of
+a constable’s first love on it. He wrote to the editors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span> half-a-dozen
+agricultural papers for information as to the best kind of food to make
+his goose a sufficiently adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But
+the perversity of that web-footed cackler was almost miraculous. The
+compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin <i>Farmer’s Gazette</i> recommended
+boiled Indian meal. The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his
+own loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white-winged
+Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian meal, and devoured the saucer.
+The constable had to retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he
+could recover from this outrage to his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry in the <i>Barndoor
+Chronicle</i> gave an elaborate recipe, which he warranted to convert
+Gallagher’s shadowy anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of
+edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted constabulary knight
+spent half a day mixing the recipe and stirring it in a canteen kettle.
+He laid it tenderly before the agent’s goose. The bird sailed into the
+kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was restored in
+Warsaw. But why continue? Every man in the barracks tried medicinal and
+culinary experiments upon Gallagher’s goose, but it refused to be
+fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating broken bottles,
+half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of the official <i>Gazette</i>, tunic
+buttons, bayonet sheaths&mdash;anything, everything, except flesh-forming
+food. It exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. Private
+circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions from George Bolton,
+search-warrants, copies of infor<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span>mation, it swallowed with an avidity
+that rendered its general abstinence all the more conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>I have devoted so much introduction to Gallagher’s goose because a
+knowledge of the physical and psychological eccentricities of that
+wonderful fowl, and a due appreciation of its literary tastes, will be
+necessary to the proper understanding of the memorable events that
+transpired during the Christmas week of 1880 at Ballyblank.</p>
+
+<h3>II.<br /><br />
+A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION.</h3>
+
+<p>The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Macgrabb and Constable
+Gallagher extended to precisely the same two individuals in Ballyblank.
+They both hated the medical student, Harry McCarthy, before alluded to,
+and they both feared and consequently respected Pat McCarthy, tenant
+farmer, and father of that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated
+Harry for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, blindly,
+madly irreverent of the mighty forces that prevail in Ireland. He never
+doffed his hat to the agent, majestic representative of property and
+propriety; he smiled at the constable, personification of British
+justice and empire, and had actually laughed at the constabulary
+joint-stock enterprise in goose fattening. Then, he was popular, and
+your little village tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who
+is loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was due in a great
+measure to his powers of mimicry, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span> the fact that Macgrabb and
+Gallagher were ever the twin objects of his talent in that direction. At
+weddings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made people roar again
+and again with his reproductions of the peeler’s parade stride and the
+magistrate’s judicial frown. It would be hard to say which had the
+greatest abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would have gloried
+in burying him under a pyramid of ejectment writs; the constable would
+have sacrificed a stripe for the privilege of emptying a company’s
+charge of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disappointment at
+finding no opportunity to either annoy or hurt him turned Macgrabb blue
+and Gallagher yellow whenever they encountered Harry’s joyous
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and feared Harry’s
+father. The policeman respected him because he was the one man in the
+parish (outside his reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either
+the agent Macgrabb or the agent’s master, Lord Clonboy. He feared the
+sturdy farmer, too, from some indefinable sensation that he could not
+account for. The reasons of the agent’s fear and respect were of a
+two-fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held a lease; and
+in the second, he had a daughter. When at the close of a gale Macgrabb
+could put a ten per cent. screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy’s
+Parisian dissipation, and a five per cent. twist for his own less
+expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only pay him a rent,
+guarded by his lease, one-half what all the surrounding tenants had to
+contribute, but he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span> could and did express his opinion of the
+rack-renting proclivities of the rural Nero in language whose emphasis
+was more marked than its elegance. It had been the life-long dream of
+the agent to break that lease, and twice had he approached within
+measurable distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of Harry’s
+collegiate education had left the old man short of money, and he had
+begged for a few weeks’ grace. Again, just a year before, when the
+universal failure of the crops should in all human probability have left
+McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer weathered his
+difficulties, and escaped the penal clause of the lease, which rendered
+the whole document void if one gale fell in arrears.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb respected McCarthy. This
+reason, Miss Ellen McCarthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one.
+Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel drawn to a buxom,
+frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, whose generous sympathies were the
+opposite of his sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of
+his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised every bone in
+his body and every constituent element of his soul, I know not; but the
+fact remained that Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy’s daughter with a
+devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfishness that he
+couldn’t quite understand it himself.</p>
+
+<p>It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose consequences were singularly
+disagreeable both to his magisterial dignity and his physical
+susceptibilities. Miss McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span>
+Harry McCarthy, to whom she related the joke, came into the parlor, and
+with a vehemence that reflected credit upon his sincerity, and a
+knowledge of sore spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical
+studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the steps, across a
+grass plot, and out into the high road.</p>
+
+<p>It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb presented the goose
+of destiny to Gallagher. A week subsequently the magistrate and the
+peeler were closeted in the former’s private office.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is the search-warrant, Tom,” observed Macgrabb, laying his hand
+familiarly on the constable’s arm. “I trust to you to see that no paper
+escapes you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands I’ll squelch
+McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on him.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a risk,” said the policeman, hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>“What risk? Information has been sworn that McCarthy’s son has been
+engaged in treasonable conspiracy, and that arms and illegal documents
+are in the father’s house. On that information I issue a warrant, and
+you execute it. It’s your duty to seize all documents&mdash;you’re not
+supposed to have time to read every letter you come across. If you don’t
+nab that rent receipt&mdash;you’ll know it&mdash;it’s on blue, thick paper&mdash;what
+harm’s done? Thank God! there’s law in the country, and police
+authorities can search these blackguards’ dens for fun, if for nothing
+else, as often as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there’s £50 down
+for you, and the chance, Tom&mdash;think of that, my<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span> boy&mdash;the chance of
+having the pleasure of assisting in turning the whole McCarthy brood
+out, and paying them off for many an old score. Why, at the school party
+last night Harry gave what he called a character sketch. What do you
+think it was? A representation of an Irish constable, and voice, legs,
+gesture, were all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till
+the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and girls yelled with
+delight. Have you any spirit, man alive, to put up with such insults?”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me the warrant,” growled Gallagher. “I suppose the National papers
+and the priest, too, for that matter, would call it stealing to take a
+rent receipt when we’re only looking for Fenian proclamations or copies
+of the <i>Irish World</i>, but I’ll chance to get even with that jackeen,
+even if I lose my stripes.”</p>
+
+<p>On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were retiring to rest, a
+loud knocking outside disarranged their programme of repose. Before the
+summons could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, and
+Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen armed men, rushed in.</p>
+
+<p>“Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot or stirs a hand!” he
+yelled. “Mr. McCarthy, in the name of the Queen and by varchue of my
+oath&mdash;I mane this sarch-warrant&mdash;I demand any arms, ammunition,
+traysonable papers, or documents of any kind delivered up to me.”</p>
+
+<p>McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat frightened, but Harry, true to
+his character, tossed a bundle of medical works on the table and cried,
+“Arrah! Ser<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span>geant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some of
+these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skeleton you would make,
+yourself! Really, I would feel a pleasure in dissecting you. You have
+such a lot of bones about you that seem out of place.”</p>
+
+<p>The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but with a sign to his
+followers proceeded to ransack the house. Every paper, envelope, or
+scrap of writing was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy,
+and the merciless jeering of the young student.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving, Gallagher grunted, “We will examine these in the barracks.
+If there’s nothing traysonable in them, you’ll get them back. If there
+is, why, law’s law, and you had better look out.”</p>
+
+<p>That night, in the privacy of his own particular room, the constable sat
+down to a perusal of the McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the
+search, and sundry non-official stimulants to duty that he had indulged
+in, had made him heavy and sleepy. Leaving the papers spread on the
+table, he stretched his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring
+in cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. He was awakened
+by a noise at the window. It was daylight. The window was open, and
+perched upon the sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was
+the constable’s attenuated goose. A glance at the table showed that the
+omnivorous cackler had been tasting the flavor of the various papers
+strewn thereon. Gallagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster,
+but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the window and
+disappeared from view.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>III.<br /><br />
+A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE.</h3>
+
+<p>About noon the constable received the following note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;Among the papers you so unwarrantably seized in your
+grossly illegal search at my house last night was a receipt for
+£24, being the amount of a half-year’s rent paid Sept. 15 to George
+Macgrabb. If it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take
+legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for your
+punishment. Yours, etc., <span class="smcap">Patrick McCarthy</span>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The first ran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">
+<span class="smcap">Mr. McCarthy</span>:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir</i>,&mdash;I know nothing about any rent receipt. If you’ll come to
+the barracks you will get all your papers back, except a few
+suspicious documents I have felt it my duty to forward to Dublin
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Yours, <span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>Constable, R. I. C.</i><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The second note was less short, but more mysterious:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">
+<span class="smcap">Mr. Macgrabb</span>:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Respected Sir</i>,&mdash;That infernal goose has got it. I saw it flying
+out of my window with one end of it in its mouth this morning.
+Anything that goose takes a fancy to swallow is done for. It has
+one of my old boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its
+stomach already, so you needn’t be afraid that it wo<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span>n’t digest a
+piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat McCarthy’s note. I’ll kill
+the goose, if you like to make sure. Your obedient and respectful</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Gallagher</span>.<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained these two missives
+from Macgrabb:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">The Lodge</span>, Dec. 7, 1880.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>My dear Mr. McCarthy</i>,&mdash;I find on looking over the office books
+that you are behind with your last half-year’s rent, due Sept. 15.
+His lordship, as you are aware, is not at all pleased with his
+father’s action in granting you the lease under which you now hold,
+and will certainly submit to no infringement of its clauses. I
+would request, therefore, immediate payment of the amount due. Of
+course you know the consequences of delay.</p>
+
+<p class="c">Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">George Macgrabb</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Dear Constable</i>,&mdash;Let the goose live. By Jingo, I’ve a mind to
+drop over on Christmas day and test its stuffing.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="smcap">George.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<h3>IV.<br /><br />
+THE CONSTABLE’S CHRISTMAS COLLATION.</h3>
+
+<p>To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his
+note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its
+literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird,
+for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more
+for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat
+annoyed, even if it did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span> alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was
+a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have
+killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost
+receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive
+interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the
+missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated
+blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document
+obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to
+breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the
+barracks of its treasure.</p>
+
+<p>On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the
+fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after
+Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent
+to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment
+against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the
+said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why
+such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious
+tenant.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.</p>
+
+<p>“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day
+or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from
+McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was
+stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the
+<i>Irish World</i> found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the
+bench against<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span> him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We
+landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G&mdash;d, I’ll
+put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll
+be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have
+every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other
+rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them
+down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more
+men.”</p>
+
+<p>“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a
+vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter,
+didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains
+of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a
+fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save
+young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out?
+He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then
+look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien.
+Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating
+and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a
+hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the
+hamper was attached a card:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“A Christmas Box&mdash;From Harry McCarthy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate,
+with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from
+the box a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span> “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher
+and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the
+goose!”</p>
+
+<p>They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough,
+as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as
+ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the
+law.</p>
+
+<p>The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time
+before he could read its contents:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>My poor Gallagher</i>,&mdash;I do not wish to deprive you of your
+Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
+collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
+last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
+has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
+exploring turn of mind that I admire&mdash;though certainly it is the
+most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
+confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
+well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
+employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
+digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
+and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
+to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
+discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
+valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
+has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
+blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
+hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
+better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
+your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
+discovery<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
+mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
+treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
+which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
+time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
+exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
+interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
+author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
+in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
+ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
+strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
+would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
+dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
+both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Yours, as ever,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<span class="smcap">Harry McCarthy</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>P. S.&mdash;I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
+which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
+you tickets?</p></div>
+
+<p>They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after
+they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply
+for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the
+whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the
+greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot
+say which was the greater surprise&mdash;that which he felt when he
+encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he
+got it back again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE" id="OUR_LAND_SHALL_BE_FREE"></a>OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>RIGHTLY our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Firm is each footstep, erect every head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wakens the nation&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On to the contest, then, up with the green again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death to the tyrant&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But now she rises erect from her knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">England no longer can mock or deride us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">True to the cause we shall ever remain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Soldiers, press onward&mdash;Our land shall be free!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="PHILIPSONS_PARTY" id="PHILIPSONS_PARTY"></a>PHILIPSON’S PARTY.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">P</span>ETER PHILIPSON, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson
+Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived
+in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the
+express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,
+which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out
+of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had
+allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three
+years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle
+manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease&mdash;with a
+view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all
+round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to
+view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was
+regarded by Old Soapsuds,&mdash;which was the very irreverend title those
+benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the
+city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime
+of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span> the
+tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table
+had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest
+bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson
+had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it
+would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no
+effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and
+calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict
+Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest
+of the tenants.</p>
+
+<p>At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going
+agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,
+ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of
+landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the
+entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put
+down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was
+smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of
+any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally
+workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked
+fifty&mdash;fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to
+beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was
+what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had
+Peter Philipson&mdash;“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.</p>
+
+<p>The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained
+the old housekeeper and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span> cook and the coachman and a stable boy,
+only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas
+Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the
+evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of
+the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first
+proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the
+neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his
+next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as
+a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he
+expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the
+recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.
+These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate
+missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,
+including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under
+penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon
+his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his
+father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle
+to the <i>Limehouse Chronicle</i> on the proper method of settling the Irish
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his
+tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay
+up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected
+so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the
+farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span>
+who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them
+retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say
+that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be
+a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,
+and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,
+he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got
+round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest
+without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an
+ill-disguised sneer.</p>
+
+<p>Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the
+wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the
+twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.</p>
+
+<p>“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we’re here to bring <i>you</i> to <i>your</i> senses; not to show that
+we’ve parted with our own.”</p>
+
+<p>“I&mdash;I&mdash;” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t
+understand you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for
+arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to
+raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long
+as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint
+too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span> to offer you a fair rint for
+this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t
+like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to
+the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”</p>
+
+<p>Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was
+nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he
+did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is
+mo&mdash;mo&mdash;monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in
+every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll
+evict&mdash;I’ll-I’ll&mdash;by Jove! I’ll&mdash;I’ll&mdash;Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of
+this!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like
+to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve
+only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,
+begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man
+to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,
+thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.
+Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts
+of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own
+fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t
+neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word
+of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A
+thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the
+deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest
+chair with a dim conviction surging through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span> his brain that there was
+something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,
+Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than
+Ballymurphy, County Cork.</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things
+were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the
+decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about
+that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so
+how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with
+him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived
+spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was
+interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man
+Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which
+at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.</p>
+
+<p>“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.</p>
+
+<p>“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,
+she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the
+’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the
+front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe
+there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,
+’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’
+mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a
+hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with
+the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span>
+come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey&mdash;I mean
+to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham&mdash;I
+didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as
+much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for
+Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of
+hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful
+Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed
+sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest
+railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the
+distance he could place before nightfall between himself and
+Ballymurphy.</p>
+
+<p>A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had
+spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires
+were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision
+store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig
+he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his
+equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter
+groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited
+guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.
+Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring
+squires from half a dozen estates&mdash;a goodly company of fifteen or
+sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their
+wants,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span> and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple
+of loaves to feast their appetites!</p>
+
+<p>It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the
+burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman
+in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the
+whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial
+in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking
+examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he
+would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?
+Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing
+his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where
+boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and
+housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he
+poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.
+With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove
+the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to
+his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He
+restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the
+stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The
+party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it
+was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.</p>
+
+<p>If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a
+soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span> the counting-house of
+Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his
+candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned
+to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be
+firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on
+the subject.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FELONS_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>ILL up once more, we’ll drink a toast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To comrades far away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nation on the earth can boast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of braver hearts than they.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though they sleep in dungeons deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or flee, outlawed and banned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We love them yet, we ne’er forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Foredoomed by alien laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some on the scaffold proudly died<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For holy Ireland’s cause.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brothers, say, shall we to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unmoved like cowards stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While traitors shame and foes defame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some in the convict’s dreary cell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have found a living tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And some unseen, unfriended, fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within its silent gloom.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet what care we, although it be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Trod by a ruffian band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless the clay where rest to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, little do we care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An Irish head can wear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every Gael in Innisfail<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Lee to Boyne would gladly join<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felons of our land!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION" id="AN_OFFICIAL_VALUATION"></a>AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as he contemplated the interminable rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As he thought of bronchial attacks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His gloomy face relaxed,&mdash;indeed, he actually laughed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He whispered to the jarvey&mdash;“You remember Murphy’s land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is, could you perambulate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around that gentleman’s estate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Return the muddy boots to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unbrushed, because I wish to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He simply mopped the boots around<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dirtiest adjacent ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER" id="A_BEWILDERED_BOYCOTTER"></a>A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>’M diminted,&mdash;this is awful; so it is<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The time I lost my churning through the thunder.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wouldn’t mind the ould man,&mdash;not a jot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I always looked upon him as a blaggard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since his language was so disperately hot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They might pass their resolutions by the score<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">About him, and I would niver prove contrary,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would do my best endayvors to obey;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION" id="A_COMPLAINT_OF_COERCION"></a>A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span> PEGGY, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And help me to recover from my state of discontint;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By the light of that same silver moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Found out of his bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But will straightway be led<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">To a cushion of plank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That of feathers is blank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For resting his arm round your waist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">An’ except for a sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or a glance of your eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or an odd little squeeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That there’s nobody sees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">His comfort will be of the laste.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I despised my five miles of a thramp<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8">For I knew at its ind<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">I could always dipind<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">That some one I’d find<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Who had sootherings kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To rescue my sperits from damp.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Stritched out on an ould cabin door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">With six ounces of lead<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Settled inside my head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">An’ my bosom, that’s true<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">As the saints unto you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Disarranged by an ounce or two more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the law has such far-seeing eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">’Twould find thim all out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And there isn’t a doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Introduced I would be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">By some dirty J. P.,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To a suit of the Government frieze.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ONEILLS_ADDRESS" id="ONEILLS_ADDRESS"></a>O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.<br /><br />
+<small>BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>ALLANT sons of Innisfail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye whose stout hearts never quail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though no glittering coats of mail<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Their proud throbbings hide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! yon distant sullen hum!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis the rolling of the drum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See! our Saxon foemen come<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">In their wrath and pride.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Meet them, comrades, face to face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet them as becomes our race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let no shadow of disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Dim our spotless name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Front to front, unshrinking, stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fire each heart and nerve each hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike for God and fatherland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Liberty and fame!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kinsmen, they are still the same<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when, centuries past, they came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To our shores, and blood and flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Followed in their track;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the still uncancelled debt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We were cowards to forget,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wrongs we suffer yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Drive them headlong back!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As when angry billows leap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like proud chargers from the deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">All their wrath to spray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So their glinting waves of steel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till their serried columns reel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Scattered in dismay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still unconquered, proud, and free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike, and fear not,&mdash;victory<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Waits on every blow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike, that we may never roam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike together, and strike home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Vengeance on the foe!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FENIANS_DREAM" id="THE_FENIANS_DREAM"></a>THE FENIAN’S DREAM.<br /><br />
+<small>CHRISTMAS, 1867.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HROUGH London’s dull and murky air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The merry Christmas bells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their sonorous throbs and swells.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the half-slumbering town they spoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of peace and God’s good-will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seemed to chase with pealing stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fiends of hate and ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, ah, how cruelly they broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around dark Pentonville!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half timid, forced their way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fell in slender, silvery streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down where the convict lay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They glanced a moment round the place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cold, comfortless, and bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, in a pitying embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like angel spirits there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caressed the careworn, pallid face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So wan, and yet so fair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They seemed to whisper softly while<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Around his head they strayed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half joy, half anguish, played;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if the tender moonbeams sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bright tales of hope to tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the day memories, bitter, wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such fancies to dispel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so his two dream guardians fought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within his lonely cell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His dream was of the loved old land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He never could forget&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had not subdued it yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land of legend and of lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of mountain, stream, and lake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of forest, glen, and brake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where highland sprite and lowland fay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A home forever make.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The land whose children toil and bleed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And drudge and starve in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For where the peasant sows the seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A stranger reaps the grain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Isle of Saints&mdash;where knaves and spies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flourish and thrive apace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where fortune must be wooed by lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dishonor, and disgrace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The true man from such saintdom flies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And cattle take his place.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Land of the green, and of the gray!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For workhouse, tomb, and jail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And answer, Innisfail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell us which tint thou seest most,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The old one or the new?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The green of which our poets boast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the more sombre hue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Few wear the green: a countless host<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have donned the gray for you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Island of verdure, glorious land!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So rich in fertile plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet famine ever reigns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where through the mellow ripening corn<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The balmiest zephyrs sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where brighter seems each glowing morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More radiant each sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where ’tis misfortune to be born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And happiness to die.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To think he played once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beside the cabin door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon his mother’s knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He first had learned to lisp a prayer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For Ireland’s liberty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ever pregnant seemed the air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With joyous melody.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His fancy changed: the youthful face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sternness now was set,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His woes had left no coward trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon his spirit yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His cheeks were all aglow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Expanded seemed the hollow chest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His brows contract, as though<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disturbed and broken was his rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By some nocturnal foe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreamt that in his native land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from this bleak jail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He stood within a meadow grand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A shamrock-spangled vale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above the scene the sun-rays bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In glittering grandeur beamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around him in their golden light<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ten thousand bayonets beamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Green Erin’s banner streamed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From town and village, hill and glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With clamorous fife and drum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From mountain brake and lowland fen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mustering legions come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has brought his dinted blade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While quickly from the neighboring town<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flock in the sons of trade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The farmer flings his good spade down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And joins the dense brigade.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fiery Northmen, in whose veins<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still flows the blood of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who on a hundred battle-plains<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have conquered Erin’s foes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The brave descendants of O’Neill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A stern and fearless band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A living wall of sparkling steel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beneath the old flag stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a Saxon foe shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With Ulster’s columns, side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are Munster’s squadrons massed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like tigers into line they glide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So noiselessly and fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They bear into the fray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through England’s host their sabres keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall carve a corse-strewn way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Limerick and Skibbereen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be well avenged to-day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Proud Leinster, all your chivalry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To arms electric spring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High ’mid the battle’s revelry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your stirring shout shall ring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a foe this day shall rue<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your fierce, impetuous might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The scenes that gallant Wexford knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall be reversed ere night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The epitaph to Emmet due<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your gleaming swords shall write.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Within your ranks this hour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the strength your hatred gives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Well may the despot cower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think of your long, black night of tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And say, can you forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That huge, uncancelled debt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wrongs of thrice two hundred years<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That scourge your province yet?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark to that distant rumbling sound!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See, yonder come the foe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now be our arms with victory crowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The foreign scum laid low.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stillness and the calm are o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And many a sulphurous cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betinged with flame and dripping gore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall form a battle-shroud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For those whose tongues may swell no more<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The nation’s slogan loud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like hostile torrents armies clash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And steel now crosses steel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lurid flames incessant flash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And volleyed thunders peal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But backward reel the alien ranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With one exultant cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not vainly will ye die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The craven red-coats fly!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And though yon darling flag<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May float above our castle towers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A torn and tattered rag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis still our own; and every fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Preserved us from the strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each shred around that flag-staff rolled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unpierced by ball or knife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is worth a mine of virgin gold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Aye, worth a hero’s life.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From slimy cell and dungeon damp<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bring forth our prisoned men;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gather, ye braves, from every camp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To cheer them home again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though to-day they did not bleed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To share our victory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We reap the harvest of their seed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So victors still they be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From faction they our people freed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And now our land is free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span>
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The city with your strain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your loudest music cannot break<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The felon’s rest again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor left a single ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For all that but this moment shone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Retreat before the day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that last, loving, pitying one<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has borne his soul away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Died in his cell”&mdash;and nothing more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas all his comrades heard;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of the dream he had before<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He died,&mdash;oh, not a word!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They found him on the coarse straw bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A smile upon his face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, “Number 28 found dead,”<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was whispered round the place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the jail doctor shook his head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And wondered at the case!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT" id="THE_SPEAKERS_COMPLAINT"></a>THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>N earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is not much fun in recovering rent<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the Land League has hold of the people;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But upheaval of earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Is good reason for mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Compared to a seat<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Where the Commoners meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Catarrhic attacks are not charming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Should close diagnosis<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Reveal your probocis<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To be of your weakness recorder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You might foolishly curse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">But it’s very much worse<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When Mulligan rises to order.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are music compared to the agonized yell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of rage and derision, his greeting;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You go home to your bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">With a pain in your head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your sleep is a blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your comfort takes flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Your breathing is tight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">You scratch and you bite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Or you wake with affright<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">As you dream through the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That Mulligan rises to order!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ERIN_MACHREE_1798" id="ERIN_MACHREE_1798"></a>ERIN MACHREE (1798).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE sun had gone down in a halo of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We gathered together in sorrow and weeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That morning must dawn on our island at last.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS" id="THAT_TRAITOR_TIMMINS"></a>THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>HEN Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years
+ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret
+conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he
+decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and
+Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly
+attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently
+to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the
+combined detective forces.</p>
+
+<p>Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff
+of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua
+Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to
+Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his
+impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is
+fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span>
+aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,&mdash;intensely
+jealous&mdash;the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy&mdash;a Mount
+Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun,
+cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.</p>
+
+<p>She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional
+nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all
+the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a
+renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his
+constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions,
+in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in
+petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix
+surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his
+coat-collar as a sort of <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> to repel illegal embraces.
+Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the
+postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was
+quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to
+witness the pair&mdash;he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the
+other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a
+miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging
+promiscuously about her&mdash;careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase
+to that winning post, the door.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of
+night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst
+out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span>
+snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the
+amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would
+remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of
+slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of
+feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.</p>
+
+<p>Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra
+professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell,
+but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or
+other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of
+civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed
+on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any
+postal manual.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not
+phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad
+fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our
+rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type.
+London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and
+cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to
+Love’s young dream in the entire A division.</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids
+either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and
+there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a
+maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted
+brother. He was madly smitten by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span> new object of adoration about every
+five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a
+week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a
+school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or
+so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular
+as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed
+around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of
+sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If
+accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and
+forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen
+cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four
+washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.</p>
+
+<p>His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent
+intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley
+Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of
+promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare
+not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet
+day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big
+brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted
+to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular
+London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all
+these horrors which a trip to Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span> afforded him. But, alas! he
+brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been
+kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not
+been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful
+affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd,
+Burns &amp; Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices&mdash;“Original price, 2
+guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”</p>
+
+<p>The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer
+in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the
+elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the
+confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their
+secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the
+pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It
+was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung,
+but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see
+her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill
+under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest
+observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!”
+he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold
+forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms,
+mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight
+effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span>
+water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens
+reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up
+alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a
+disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and
+electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a
+stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred
+spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing,
+of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare
+the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely,
+and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with
+me to sunnier climes?&mdash;we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or
+Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest
+Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or
+whatever thy sweet name may be&mdash;behold me at thy feet!”</p>
+
+<p>And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the
+bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of
+which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of
+plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool
+shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman
+was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at
+robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in
+the shape of tears.</p>
+
+<p>The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span> tender-hearted
+Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the
+most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t
+tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish
+colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a
+charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought
+it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’
+figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which
+shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit
+those wonderfully informed London journals, the <i>Standard</i> and <i>Daily
+Telegraph</i>, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping
+vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to
+remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins
+himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of
+his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at
+least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric
+light.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="BALFOURS_WISH" id="BALFOURS_WISH"></a>BALFOUR’S WISH.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN members have taken their usual places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as, one by one, question follows on question,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In agony mental that spoils his digestion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“The average size of potatoes in Clare?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A third seeks a legal opinion, without<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Does he ever indulge in the national car?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="OUR_CAUSE" id="OUR_CAUSE"></a>OUR CAUSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>EVEN hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT" id="SERVED_HIM_RIGHT"></a>SERVED HIM RIGHT.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the
+Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said: “It served Pat
+right. He had no business going out there to fight those poor
+creatures (the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi.”&mdash;<i>London
+Graphic.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span> HAVE no tears for brother Pat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the Egyptian desert, that<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He might assist in England’s glory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The foes he fought were not his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor his the tyrant’s cause he aided;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then why should I his fate bemoan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O brother, faithless and degraded!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He saw how Saxon laws at home<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had crushed his sires and banned his brothers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why should he cross the ocean’s foam<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To place that hated yoke on others?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Arabs slew him in a fight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For all by brave and free men cherished&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, for the cause of truth and right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For which his kith and kin had perished.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No Arab chief in Ninety-eight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Placed foot on Erin’s shore as foeman;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They lent no spears to swell the hate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Hessian hound and Orange yeoman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But those who wrapt our homes in flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was for them&mdash;oh, burning shame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My brother gave his life in battle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sure, every memory of late<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Must from his wretched heart have vanished;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hills and valleys desolate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our ruined homes, our people banished.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, God knows, he learned in youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The gloomy story of his sireland&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drank in at mother’s knees the truth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That England is the scourge of Ireland.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cannot weep for brother Pat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I hate the hellish cause he died for;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">False traitor to the freedom that<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E’en when in tearful dreams I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My grief is changed to anger. He<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was treacherous to the land that bore him!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="RAPPAREE_SONG" id="RAPPAREE_SONG"></a>RAPPAREE SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’re traitors because we are true to our land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have hunted us down now for many a day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND" id="TO_THE_LANDLORDS_OF_IRELAND"></a>TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">Y</span>OU tendered us when famine came<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pity of a thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hearts and souls you’d bought.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time’s wheel turns round&mdash;you’ve lost your place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And right into your tyrant face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Your jibes and sneers<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Of many years<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">At victims’ tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Are thrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And in God’s name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Our hearts aflame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">To-day we claim<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Muscle and brain we wrought.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Toiled, starved, and died&mdash;scarce for ourselves<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The crumbs of Lazarus sought;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when ye flung us out a crust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our faces grovelling in the dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">We gave ye thanks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">No prize, all blanks<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">In our poor ranks<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Was known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">But now, thank God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">We’ve spurned your rod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And claim this sod<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We lift our faces to the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where once our heads were bowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We breathe no more a timid sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But speak our thoughts aloud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From dizzy hill and peaceful plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our voices join in this refrain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The seeds we sow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The crops we grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The fields we mow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Without your aid<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">In cash or spade<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">At last are made<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">Our own!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="BALFOUR_REJOICES" id="BALFOUR_REJOICES"></a>BALFOUR REJOICES.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O the toil of the session is over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My woes for a period cease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hey for a journey by Dover<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To latitudes promising peace;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away to recuperate vigor&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from obstruction’s mad spell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away from the questions of Biggar&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Away from the taunts of Parnell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more my poor head shall be aching<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With night after night of debate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more shall my soul feel a quaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At bald, irrepressible prate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, though ocean attack me with rigor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And getting away from Parnell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No more to be quizzed on each capture<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of priest or of peasant by night&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could dance the can-can in my rapture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or stand on my head with delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or like a wild Irishman yell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And don’t give&mdash;ahem&mdash;for Parnell!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet I feel an occasional spasm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At thoughts of returning at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twere better to leap down a chasm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or under an avalanche fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, fingers embracing the trigger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let the pistol’s report loudly tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How I hated the queries of Biggar<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the dolorous talk of Parnell.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER" id="A_PICTURESQUE_PENNY-A-LINER"></a>A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that
+powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville <i>Sparrow</i>, is a
+sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be
+the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville
+<i>Sparrow</i> (<i>vide</i> its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in
+the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of
+Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and
+creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so
+tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the
+times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the
+Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York
+<i>Herald</i> and <i>Tribune</i> and <i>Times</i> and the Boston <i>Herald</i> and a score
+of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the
+<i>Sparrow</i> felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by
+following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,
+advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold
+himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial
+back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He
+was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old
+copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the
+landed gentry of the country.</p>
+
+<p>His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span> ground. “You
+know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were
+there. We’ve got to lick the New York <i>Herald</i> and the rest of ’em.
+Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.
+There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious
+management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d
+better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do
+to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might
+skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and
+give us some lively telegrams.”</p>
+
+<p>Well, it <i>was</i> lively for a few weeks after that in the <i>Sparrow</i>. One
+day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland&mdash;Seven Landlords Shot!” The next
+there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara&mdash;Six Agents
+Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the <i>Tribune</i> came out
+with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there
+had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and
+seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious
+reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,
+and who didn’t grasp the fact that the <i>Tribune’s</i> was a three-months’
+record, paralyzed the readers of the <i>Sparrow</i> with a blood-curdling
+telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in
+the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in
+their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having
+suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and
+processes on the half-shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146">{146}</a></span> to being stripped naked and turned loose
+for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time
+the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names
+eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to
+improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of
+variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred
+land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should
+diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Galway</span>, Tuesday.&mdash;A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from
+which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon
+yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he
+weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have
+been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new
+veins yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan
+boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she
+can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She
+wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the
+editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,
+according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers
+began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen
+murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of
+errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as
+well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the
+chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147">{147}</a></span> bar next door.
+“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.
+Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,
+and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy
+for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the
+<i>Sparrow</i>, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish
+correspondent:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose
+energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a
+position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.
+As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,
+and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who
+for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his
+repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in &mdash;&mdash;. But to
+abbreviate.</p>
+
+<p>“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose
+brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible
+marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,
+whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin
+elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature
+had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy
+proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we
+asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of
+being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness
+will corroborate<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148">{148}</a></span> my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was
+down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought
+me into Ballykill&mdash;something or somebody. I never witnessed anything
+like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They
+were worn to threads.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make
+a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could
+produce anything like a respectable shade.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of
+the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to
+bark at me&mdash;just collapsed like a house of cards.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He
+felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion
+warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and
+succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary
+instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow
+you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I gave the man a shilling for him&mdash;in two sixpences, so that he could
+balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side
+pocket, it would have brought him down.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s
+centre of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149">{149}</a></span> dining-room, but,
+fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.
+In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom
+of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He
+couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.
+He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his
+feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position
+when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect
+his tail.’</p>
+
+<p>“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double
+knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much
+so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot
+out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a
+moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the
+Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails
+in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had
+a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’
+concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of
+a knot on a dog’s tail!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE" id="THE_IRISH_BRIGADE"></a>THE IRISH BRIGADE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150">{150}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They loved the green island, and died where they fought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May we fight the battle of freedom as well<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151">{151}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SNOOKS" id="SNOOKS"></a>SNOOKS.</h2>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="letra">J</span>USTICE in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the
+law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high
+priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist
+temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about
+one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British
+honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only
+pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very
+corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends
+to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should
+be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,
+he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable
+record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative
+to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of
+the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There
+is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.
+When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he
+holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks
+[<i>laughter</i>] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by
+Snooks.’ [<i>Laughter.</i>]”</p></div>
+
+<p>Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect
+that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of
+the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152">{152}</a></span>
+deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest
+admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to
+that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you notice a policeman at the corner of a street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And confusion quite apparent in his looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which his dignity but very little brooks.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS" id="CALEDONIAN_CANDLESTICKS"></a>CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>OWARDS the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of
+whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into
+one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her
+like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153">{153}</a></span> pranks of Fenianism
+first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had
+just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel
+leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty
+conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was
+felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been
+foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at
+Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and
+hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and
+provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful
+conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had
+been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky
+Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The
+volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and
+eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible
+confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their
+presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,
+while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like
+Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were
+seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s
+residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with
+nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express
+for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the
+suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of
+engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the
+defunct<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154">{154}</a></span> tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in
+England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they
+were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed
+to the depths of the silent waters.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm
+existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was
+augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county
+constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest
+surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public
+buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags
+of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the
+sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like
+Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,
+and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent
+of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he
+ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.
+Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian
+bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon
+the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in
+garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer
+when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing
+the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the
+troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the
+ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the
+barracks attacked<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155">{155}</a></span> by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,
+bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,
+sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into
+as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.</p>
+
+<p>Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of
+Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without
+knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the
+Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,
+and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of
+Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,
+and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.
+Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and
+tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the
+entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow
+candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as
+to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an
+Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they
+were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold
+the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander
+carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the
+candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or
+was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege
+last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of
+the candle<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156">{156}</a></span> idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a
+doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when
+at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to
+find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and
+would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions
+of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm
+tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that
+battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as
+the Caledonian Candlesticks.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST" id="FAITHFUL_TO_THE_LAST"></a>FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>O they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157">{157}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158">{158}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG" id="FENIAN_BATTLE-SONG"></a>FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>URRAH! we stand on Irish land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our hated foe before us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And once for all, to rise or fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The green flag flying o’er us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve raised it proudly overhead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God prosper our endeavor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unite our bands, and nerve our hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To keep it there forever!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We marched away at break of day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sweethearts left behind us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To strike one blow at yon false foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose rusty fetters bind us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For while we bear the name of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, Ireland shall be free again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’ve listened long to traitors mean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">False England’s scarlet praising;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve heard them mock our Irish green<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Until our blood seemed blazing!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chieftains, too, who should be true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have kept our ranks asunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In Freedom’s battle-thunder!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then here’s hurrah for all the brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No matter who may lead ’em,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here’s a curse on every slave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who mars the cause of freedom!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159">{159}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let leaders vain aside remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Until their feuds are ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Tis by the man who knows no clan<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag must be defended.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We’ve men from Galway to Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Limerick’s walls to Derry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold ramblers from the County Clare<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mountaineers from Kerry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll chase our alien foes away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll tear our bonds asunder;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We care not who’s to lead to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>We’ll</i> fight and conquer under!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS" id="THE_GRAVE_OF_THE_MARTYRS"></a>THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">F</span>AR away from the home and the friends they love best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160">{160}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When they took them away from that desolate place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They found death had left a bright smile on each face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="DEATHS_VICTORY" id="DEATHS_VICTORY"></a>DEATH’S VICTORY.<br /><br />
+<small>IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE Poet may grieve for his Art’s vacant throne;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But with these ’tis not death&mdash;for through every age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the lore of the Student, in History’s page,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the stories they tell, the examples they give,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Genius and Truth&mdash;he will live! he will live!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_161" id="page_161">{161}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With the cypress the laurel of glory shall twine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To deck the white shaft that will rise o’er his shrine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To his land and his kindred shall long be his name.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But to those who have loved him, oh! what can replace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grasp of his hand or the light of his face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The true, tender friendship an angel might prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he welcomes us, too, over death’s dismal wave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lives to the world, but to us he is dead.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG" id="THE_GREEN_FLAG_AT_FREDERICKSBURG"></a>THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">B</span>EAR it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the battle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On, on, through the smoke and the glare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though in hail-storms the balls from yon black ramparts rattle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We will plant it triumphantly there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Twas lost at the base of the hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths enshrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have marched ’neath its folds over meadow and mountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In sunshine and shower, side by side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To guard it we opened our hearts’ living fountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_162" id="page_162">{162}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till death bids our warm hearts be chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our foes even then shall behold that above us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag waves triumphantly still!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died under;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The flag that our children shall bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When at home in the old land the cannon’s dread thunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Knells Tyranny’s doom on the air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twill be born o’er the foam-crested waves of the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see in the land of their love and devotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our flag wave triumphantly still.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND" id="THE_FLAG_OF_OUR_LAND"></a>THE FLAG OF OUR LAND.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>OME kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">from North,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! hark! the wild slogan of war pealing forth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gather once more ’neath the Flag of our Land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers’ fires?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By tyrants and traitors forever be trod?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_163" id="page_163">{163}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For freedom or death ’neath the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the plunderers’ fires and the murderers’ steel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the scaffold’s red path and the dungeon’s dread gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their myriad victims who call from the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY" id="HURRAH_FOR_LIBERTY"></a>HURRAH FOR LIBERTY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>ROUSE ye from your slumbering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Awake to life once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The time for idle pleadings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And for vain regrets is o’er;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll bend and crouch no more like hounds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But in a fight like men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With men’s brave hearts and men’s stout arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll win our own again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for liberty!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Till death we stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To make our land<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">A nation proud and free.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_164" id="page_164">{164}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We bent unto the tyrant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we prayed in vain for years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now we’re going to try, boys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rifle-balls instead of tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our sighs shall be the trumpet’s call,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The rolling of the drum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in future our petitions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the cannon’s mouth shall come.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Galway right to Wicklow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from Cork to Donegal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll march once more for liberty<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To win it or to fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll flaunt our flag from cliff and crag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And guard it with our steel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ll show our foes what deadly blows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each Irish arm can deal.&mdash;Hurrah!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In ages past the redcoats quailed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Before our fathers’ might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have we not still the courage left<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To battle for the right?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though cowards dread the troops in red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We’ll cross their steel with joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And show that Irish valor was<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not spent at Fontenoy.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wily knave, the coward slave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To home and life may cling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But there’s no place for falsehood’s face<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where gleaming sabres ring!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_165" id="page_165">{165}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We’ve thrown our gage, our lives we wage<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For Freedom and for Right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appeals we’ve tried; now, God decide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our last appeal is fight!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MESSENGER" id="THE_MESSENGER"></a>THE MESSENGER.<br /><br />
+<small>NOVEMBER 23, 1867.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>ITH bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered round him there&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young and fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We questioned him with eager eyes&mdash;we had not power to speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened every cheek!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue refused its task,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we would ask;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding showers like rain!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_166" id="page_166">{166}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And by his grief at last we knew the news he could not tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And over every hope a black and blighting shadow fell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh! so heavy on each heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forbade our tears to start!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resistless might<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a bloody fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made Southern foemen reel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly ’gainst triple lines of steel&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the face&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seemed as if they’d fallen, too, beneath the crushing blow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter night were shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And who shall count the curses heaped upon the murderer’s head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_167" id="page_167">{167}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the Divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the heroes who had fallen on their suff’ring country’s shrine!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> boy in years but man in heart, who, pale and fearless, trod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The scaffold’s path as proudly as if ’twere his native sod;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who stood upon the grave’s dark brink with heart that never failed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that never quailed!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> the dark-eyed soldier, who, unhurt, untouched, had pass’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through many a hard-fought battle-field, now fronted death at last;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such a death&mdash;the felon’s death&mdash;the death that villains die&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And, last of all, the father,<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> who that day would leave behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, unkind:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wonder if he faltered&mdash;’twas, oh God! a fearful test;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_168" id="page_168">{168}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And these are murderers, they say&mdash;are cowards, base and vile:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These gallant ones who perished for their distant native isle&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cowards and murderers, they say; oh, grant us patience, God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant’s heavy rod.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL" id="A_TYPICAL_TRIAL"></a>A TYPICAL TRIAL.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">J</span>OSEPH O’GRABALL, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in
+the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace
+and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid
+offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I
+shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real
+cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably
+one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional
+magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found
+temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed
+into law.</p>
+
+<p>Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality
+decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity,
+but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to
+nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing
+faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest
+provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can
+tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_169" id="page_169">{169}</a></span> an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of
+his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side
+with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every
+individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He
+is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and
+arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a
+mustache.</p>
+
+<p>Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life
+lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a
+simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is
+little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless
+there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting
+this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no
+leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But
+the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to
+arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober,
+unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to
+his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies?
+Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A
+goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about
+Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might
+have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in
+enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_170" id="page_170">{170}</a></span> April night a
+sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s,
+and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed,
+they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty
+nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the
+indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark,
+which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.</p>
+
+<p>“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised,
+and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to
+destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious
+Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of
+England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and
+the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.</p>
+
+<p>“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset
+or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the
+ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”</p>
+
+<p>“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”</p>
+
+<p>“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before
+my men. Come along.”</p>
+
+<p>Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_171" id="page_171">{171}</a></span> utterly amazed and
+confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks,
+where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into
+the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones
+what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality
+a rich burlesque:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Prisoner, what is your name?”</p>
+
+<p>“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”</p>
+
+<p>“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have
+been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of
+such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a
+note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is
+correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”</p>
+
+<p>“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male
+gender?”</p>
+
+<p>“He wore breeches, anyhow.”</p>
+
+<p>“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant,
+make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the
+customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case
+is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now,
+prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your honor.”</p>
+
+<p>“And this hammer?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your lordship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_172" id="page_172">{172}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“And these nails?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and
+this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and
+revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your
+diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how
+far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of
+your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do
+you say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood
+with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens
+be his bed; and the nails&mdash;the nails&mdash;the troth, I don’t know what I
+wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the
+sarjent.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you.
+The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police
+barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand
+grenades.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but
+he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient
+magistrate proceeded:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_173" id="page_173">{173}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter&mdash;a very
+important letter&mdash;from New York. Where did you discover that?”</p>
+
+<p>“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream
+of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now,
+prisoner, what is this drawing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was
+thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so
+proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with
+the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland,
+with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that
+the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through
+that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”</p>
+
+<p>“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat
+should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking
+you are.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter
+is dated New York&mdash;the most treasonable locality on the face of the
+earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother&mdash;(of course you’re all brothers.
+Sergeant, make a note of that)&mdash;I write these few lines hoping they will
+find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God.
+(There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I
+cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_174" id="page_174">{174}</a></span> discern it just now.) I met the ould man&mdash;(Rossa, I suppose.
+Make a note, sergeant)&mdash;on landing. He would advise you not to kill the
+ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old&mdash;oh! horrible! I see it all. They have
+actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You
+might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant,
+to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the
+rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means&mdash;they begin with the
+same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he
+mean by that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Um&mdash;um&mdash;yourself, I think, your washup.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel
+would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the
+overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed
+further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world
+might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such
+desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen,
+I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence
+with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the
+highest sentence in my power&mdash;three months’ imprisonment&mdash;and, sergeant,
+just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”</p>
+
+<p>Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither
+himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought
+his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was
+convicted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_175" id="page_175">{175}</a></span> And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of
+the coercion act.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN" id="JOHN_BULLS_APPEAL_TO_JONATHAN"></a>JOHN BULL’S APPEAL TO JONATHAN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my plight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all night&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An incubus I can’t shake off, a shade I cannot fight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am very, very sorry for the <i>Alabama’s</i> pranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I regret that I contributed to arm Secession’s ranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if you’ll only aid me now to crush these Irish cranks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon my knees I’ll pledge eternal gratitude and thanks.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan braves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their caves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her slaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when the men she drove from home with steel and buckshot dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Return with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And send his best establishments cavorting through the air&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good Heavens! you must admit it’s quite a different affair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_176" id="page_176">{176}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might explode,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty’s abode.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or road,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And letter-carriers tremble ’neath the lightest postal load.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is terror in the country and anxiety in town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by John Brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us some ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended knees.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in return I’ll take of you whatever you may please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your cheese.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven’s name don’t delay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_177" id="page_177">{177}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB" id="THE_STORY_OF_A_BOMB"></a>THE STORY OF A BOMB.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HERE Shannon’s waves with smiling face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woo smiling banks with soft embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A modest cabin stood beside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its gentle perfume-laden tide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunshine of an honest life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A prattling child, a loving wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The joys of home, their blessings shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around the peasant tenant’s head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The twinkling stars of summer skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Reflected back his colleen’s eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">His baby’s locks the noonday rays<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Encircled with a golden haze.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But drear December, dark and chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whirled blighting blasts adown the hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sickness and famine scourged the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in their train the landlord band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And aiding in their mission dire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The liveried hounds in England’s hire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In one brief hour their work was o’er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A happy home was home no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The wintry skies looked sadly down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Upon the babe that sobbed to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Upon its dying mother’s breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A week&mdash;a month&mdash;he had no power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mark or count each anguished hour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_178" id="page_178">{178}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He knew not if ’twere night or day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When wife and infant passed away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without a hope to dull the pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That numbed his heart and seared his brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Despair behind and gloom before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He left his native Shannon’s shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The ship’s dark side with fond caress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">While chimes from many a distant bell<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Breathed Mother Erin’s last farewell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With earnest faces fierce and grim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are gathered near a silent swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough toilers from a mining camp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rasping tones of Ulster greet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The voice of Munster soft and sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Connaught’s mellow accent blends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one and all are Ireland’s friends.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Yet whispering pines that bend above<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Hear words of hatred, not of love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Tears that from eyes of strong men fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Are not of mercy, but of gall.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Each has a sickening tale to tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of England’s robber rule of hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each has a deeply cherished cause<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hate her power and curse her laws.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Then who will venture life, and go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wreak our vengeance on this foe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_179" id="page_179">{179}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though ’mid the ruins he may lie?”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he from Shannon answers “I!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The western breezes catch the vow<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">That surges from his bosom now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The exile’s vengeful brand to bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And smite the tiger in his lair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In Babylonian halls to-night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are strains of mirth and flashing light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sheen of satin, gleaming gems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In scores of priceless diadems;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These are the butterflies, the drones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vampires who feed on blood and bones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, cruel parasites, beware,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One victim of your wrong is there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The London skies are black with cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The earth enwrapt in night’s dark shroud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">As by the despot’s citadel<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">A hand from Shannon fires the shell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">England, to thee and thine belongs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The memory of uncounted wrongs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, multiplied through all the years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have dried the fount of Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can turn the wrath thou hast defied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of hearts like those from Shannon’s side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy future sky is overcast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy halcyon days forever past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_180" id="page_180">{180}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM" id="AVENGING_THOUGH_DIM"></a>AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>VENGING, though dim, with the dust of inaction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of faction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That true men e’er falter or brave spirits yield.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With resolute nerve, may be laid in the clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That throbs through the soul of the nation to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be it in future for joy or for sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tyrants of Ireland shall find from to-morrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sweets of their empire embittered with gall.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885" id="CHRISTMAS_DIRGE_OF_THE_LONDON_POLICE_1885"></a>CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POLICE (1885).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">C</span>HRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We should be happy&mdash;for Christmas is here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet to it all we are sadly insensible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We have no heart for festivities gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_181" id="page_181">{181}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! the dark future is incomprehensible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Irish conspiracies hatch night and day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, dear! what will become of us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Will they blow up every man or but some of us?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Give us a rest&mdash;we are pining away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the dread terrors that nightly control<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the dark depths of a peeler’s interior,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we may not place a moment’s dependency<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How long intact shall our rendezvous stay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">O Lord! but the immensity<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Splits through the dullest official head’s density,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Turning our locks into premature gray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Peelers have long since forgotten to smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the omniscient Skirmisher’s guile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How could a uniformed breast be hilarious,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When it may shortly be scattered around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With scarce a prospect&mdash;oh future precarious!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That a brass button would ever be found?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, dear! is there a river in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">England that hasn’t a dynamite shiver in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Each beating heart that is left above ground?<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_182" id="page_182">{182}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885" id="IRELANDS_PRAYER_MAY_1885"></a>IRELAND’S PRAYER (MAY, 1885).</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H, children of that scattered race whose agony and tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven hundred circling years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on England’s coasts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of marching hosts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered Freedom’s tomb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See tottering on Britannia’s brow her loose imperial crown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to drag it down!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beside the storied Pyramids the desert’s swarthy sons<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones and rusting guns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless El Mahdi’s spearmen and the legions of the Czar!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_183" id="page_183">{183}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Heaven guide the Zulu assegai until it sinks to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From point to butt ensheathëd in a quivering English breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Complete and end its mission in an English lung or head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For whosoever smashes blows on Britain’s brazen form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and storm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper Louis Riel!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR" id="JOHN_BULLS_NEW_YEAR"></a>JOHN BULL’S NEW YEAR.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN BULL looked haggard and drear<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">With fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the bells rang out the old year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">“Oh, dear!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He moaned, “but my lot has been sorry and sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ne’er had twelve months of such trouble before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">It’s queer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“With Hans I would like to agree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">For he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is an inch or two taller than me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">You see;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_184" id="page_184">{184}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he’s gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I had to vanish or he’d kick me out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he says ever since he will ‘pull mine snout<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Mit glee.’<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Then Mossoo, who lives o’er the way<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Is gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At my numerous signs of decay<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Each day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He snaps his fingers right under my nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And has not a pitying word for my woes<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">To say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I once could warn Ivan the bear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Take care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the lion you stir in his lair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Beware!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now he has laid his big claws on Herat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all I can do is to squeal like a cat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I fear that some day I’ll be squelched like a rat<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Out there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But my worst and my ugliest fright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">A sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That keeps me in shivering plight<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">All night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He’s my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ’tis only just now I’m beginning to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">His might!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_185" id="page_185">{185}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“So for me there’s no Happy New Year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Oh, dear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But doubt, and misgiving, and fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">Are here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My neighbors discover I’m toothless and blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They cuff me before and they kick me behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in all the world not a friend can I find<br /></span>
+<span class="i15">To cheer!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="READY_AND_STEADY" id="READY_AND_STEADY"></a>READY AND STEADY.<br /><br />
+<small>A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG (1867).</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>EADY, boys, ready, the morning is breaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calls o’er the ocean for aid to her sons.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, boys, forever Erin’s endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Reaches its triumph or falls on its bier;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You must decide in the dawning new year.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Comrade or foeman?&mdash;your choice must be made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Neither has room for a neutral brigade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voices that palter, hearts that may falter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There is no welcome or place for you here;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arms but of you men&mdash;fearless and true men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Strike the last blow in the coming new year.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_186" id="page_186">{186}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Victory marches, but never despair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silent, but ready, anxious but steady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lean on your arms till the signal you hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, be your story sadness or glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still, ’twill illumine your country’s new year.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED" id="WHY_SMITHERS_RESIGNED"></a>WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>O you wish to know why Smithers resigned his position as head constable
+of Kilmacswiggin? Well, as the night’s young, and I’m not particularly
+busy, I don’t mind spending half an hour or so in telling you the story.</p>
+
+<p>You see, during the time of the Land League troubles, some of the
+landlords round here, knowing that they had little reason to expect any
+overwhelming affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of
+income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the clouds, for bad
+luck to the penny they could collect, began to get uneasy and scared,
+and thought it would be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police
+in the parish, though it’s too many of the same streelers were quartered
+on us to begin with. The district, barring that the farmers kept their
+money in their own pockets and used strong language when the rent
+collector called on them, was quiet, and peaceable, and could have been
+easily managed without a peeler at all, but the land<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_187" id="page_187">{187}</a></span>lords wanted bad to
+force their rents out of the poor peasantry or take their land from
+them, as they used to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in
+and put an extinguisher on their proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>So, as the people couldn’t be tempted to make fools of themselves by
+playing into the land-grabbers’ hands by such frolics as popping at
+their agents with old blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting
+fire to process servers’ hayricks, the landlords began to manufacture
+outrages on their own account. They wrote threatening letters to each
+other by the bushel, with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date
+lines, and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every sentence,
+and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the signature of “Captain
+Moonlight” or “Rory of the Hills,” to show how terribly in earnest they
+were. Oh, they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner
+recognized by Mr. Trench in his “Recollections of an Irish Landlord,”
+and made familiar to the world by the regiments of English special
+correspondents that were then roaming and perambulating Ireland like
+journalistic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be
+dissected in the columns of their respective organs. They wrote, too,
+blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowing narratives of the horrors of life in
+Kilmacswiggin for the London papers, till one of the Orange members from
+the North drew attention in the House to what he called the terrible
+state of affairs in that parish, and, though Healy and Biggar
+contradicted his assertions, and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings
+of massacre, rapine, blood, and flame if a whole <i>corps d’armee</i> and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_188" id="page_188">{188}</a></span>
+part of the channel squadron wasn’t immediately sent to occupy the bogs
+and ditches there, the then chief secretary, Buckshot Forster, promised
+to see into the matter, and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin,
+Col. Hillier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that made that
+head constable’s ears tingle. He as much as told Smithers that if he
+didn’t arrest somebody for something or other he might take out his
+walking papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He’d willingly
+have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, and child, if he could have
+found the shadow of an excuse, but he couldn’t, poor fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the far end of the
+parish, was engaged in a little business speculation on his own account,
+in the shape of a brisk trade in the finest poteen that was ever
+distilled in these parts&mdash;and that’s a big word. The still was away
+somewhere in the mountains,&mdash;it may be there yet, so I shan’t go into
+geographical details,&mdash;and Pat was employed as a kind of messenger
+between the boys there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the
+towns and villages round who don’t believe in contributing any more to
+the British revenue than they can help. Maybe he visited me sometimes,
+and maybe he didn’t. That’s neither here nor there. I may just observe
+that I never pay taxes willingly. You can take what you like out of
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Pat’s neighbors grew envious of the good luck he was having, and
+one day some sleeveen&mdash;it was never found out who the stag was&mdash;came
+into the barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_189" id="page_189">{189}</a></span> Moran had
+guns and powder and shot hid away in his old cabin. The sly rogue knew
+that if he complained to Smithers that it was merely illicit whiskey Pat
+had, the head constable wouldn’t give a thraneen about the matter, and
+as like as not would let Pat alone. But the mention of contraband
+material of war worked up Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if
+he could manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of
+dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. There was no
+position he might not attain. He would succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might
+be made a K. C. B. Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes he was <i>en route</i> for Pat’s, with a dozen constabulary
+men at his back. How Pat found out he was coming I can’t say; but he did
+find out while Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried
+consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift a keg of poteen
+which was in the house, but they hit upon a ruse which might succeed,
+and at any rate couldn’t make things worse. They wheeled the keg of
+whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in another minute Pat was
+lying on the bed with his head enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages,
+awaiting the crisis.</p>
+
+<p>The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they came together. The
+search began. The peelers explored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and
+seemed disappointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. They
+sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, held a sort of post-mortem
+examination on the furniture, and poked the roof so effectually with
+their bay<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_190" id="page_190">{190}</a></span>onets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The commander
+went so far as to make the youngest of the force ascend the chimney. He
+found nothing there but soot. However, he brought enough of that back
+with him to satisfy his most ardent desires.</p>
+
+<p>Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but the old woman clung
+to his arm and tearfully beseeched him not to do so.</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! ha!” cried the enterprising officer, bursting the door in with his
+foot, “I smell a rat,” and he rushed into the room, where the first
+object to meet his gaze was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and
+poulticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or watermelon.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, wirra! wirra!” sobbed the old woman; “you’ve kilt my boy. He’s very
+bad with small-pox, ochone! ochone! and the doctor said only this
+blissid mornin’ that he wasn’t to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck
+on him last night, an’ it’s a beautiful pock you have, avick machree;
+and now&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward clean out of the
+house, and was licking all previous racing records up the boreen, with
+his handkerchief to his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a
+pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great Yankee runner! He
+would have been left in the cold that day.</p>
+
+<p>You may be sure it wasn’t long before the whole story of how Moran
+fooled the head constable went the rounds of the country. It came to
+Smithers’ own ears at last, and from that hour he was an altered man.
+He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_191" id="page_191">{191}</a></span> would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and people who
+heard him sometimes say that his oaths would lift the hair on the scalp
+of an Egyptian mummy. The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There
+never was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn’t get hold
+of, and he invented such a lot of brand-new, original, comic, pathetic,
+eccentric, square, round, oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly
+ornamented or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of sulphur
+and brimstone seemed to hang around his conversation. The habit so crept
+upon him that when he wished at last to shake it off, he couldn’t. His
+tongue had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that it could
+utter nothing else. It became a matter of anxious consideration to him
+how he was to eliminate from his conversation the picturesque adjectives
+it would under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years to
+accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. “Smith,” said he, “I have a
+[powerful expletive not to be found in any polite guide to conversation]
+bad habit.”</p>
+
+<p>“Only one,” said his brother official; “that’s nothing. A man who has
+been on the force ten years and has only acquired one bad habit, has
+wasted his opportunities.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a blank blank
+[double-barrelled adjective] muss in society some fine day. You see I
+can’t speak ten words without cursing. If I can, &mdash;&mdash; my eyes!”
+[ophthalmic operation not recognized in modern surgery].</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” said Harvey Duff 2; “you must repress that custom. It’s low.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_192" id="page_192">{192}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“How the &mdash;&mdash; [distant region occasionally alluded to in sermons and
+theological disquisitions] can I?”</p>
+
+<p>His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogitates, there are enough
+scintillations of intellect flashing round to illuminate the interior of
+an Egyptian pyramid. The result of his meditation was his advice to
+Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he transgressed to take a
+note of the offence. In twelve hours he had filled up two
+three-hundred-page memorandum books, and used up a dozen and a half of
+pencils. It became irksome pottering round with a note-book in one hand
+and a stick of lead in the other entering everlasting ejaculations; he
+wore the skin off his fingers, and, besides, he couldn’t keep up with
+himself, and he missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions
+every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He arranged with his wife
+that every time he articulated forbidden sounds he should hand her over
+a penny. He provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the
+arrangement, but he hadn’t a red cent by noon, and in three days he had
+parted with all his ready cash, made over his next year’s income, and
+didn’t even own the boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better
+half that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time he
+offended, and now if there’s a more bald-headed man to be found on this
+side the day of judgment, I’m willing to turn cannibal, and eat him.</p>
+
+<p>His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at last, when his
+report began to resemble his verbal utterances, and they reprimanded him
+sharply. He replied in a letter that is preserved in the official<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_193" id="page_193">{193}</a></span>
+archives as a sample of what the English language is capable of. The
+reading of it drove two Castle authorities mad, and sent the third into
+a galloping consumption. Well, that’s how Smithers left the force.
+Strange story, ain’t it?</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI" id="THE_CHARGE_OF_THE_GUARDS_AT_LONDON_TOWERI"></a>THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER.<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a><br /><br />
+<small>BY ALFRED TENNYSON’S GHOST.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>HASTLY white with affright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down stairs they thundered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peelers and grenadiers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nearly a hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of doors shrieking loud<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rushed the scared hundred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They had no wish to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blown up or sundered.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crash! went a bomb o’erhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Oh, Lord!” each bearskin said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wildly in flight they sped&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Disgruntled hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bang! went that bombshell near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were they o’ercome with fear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You bet your boots they were&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All of the hundred;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_194" id="page_194">{194}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs not to question why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roof soared aloft to sky&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs but to cut and fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sensible hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Women to right of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women to left of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Children in front of them<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Fainted or wondered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they were trained too well&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They knew what meant that shell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So with a gruesome yell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Head over heels, pell-mell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Scattered the hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Did they flash sabres bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out on the trembling air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, they just left them there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">There to be plundered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And through the struggling mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Matron and babe and lass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plunged and strove hard to pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Choking and gasping&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ah, horrified hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Glass smashed to right of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beams flew to left of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walls gaped in front of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Shattered and sundered;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All round the citadel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stormed by that awful shell,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_195" id="page_195">{195}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plaster and brickbats fell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down on their heads in storms.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, it was worse than hell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out over prostrate forms<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Charged all the hundred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When shall the record fade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the quick time they made?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All the world wondered.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greyhound or Arab steed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not excel the speed<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of that swift hundred.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES" id="AN_ADDRESS_TO_SLAVES"></a>AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Helots of Ireland! Bow down to the stranger;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bondsmen and serfs! bend the sycophant knee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be Emmet forgotten, Tone’s story unspoken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let the green shamrocks wither above their lone graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_196" id="page_196">{196}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Though oppression stalks over the old land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aye, shout! Till your cheers tell the world ye have sold land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince’s false smile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The iron has entered your souls, and forever<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May it brand you as craven and false to your race;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May the years that roll by bring oblivion never<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that dances<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Round the path of the Prince is the alien red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering lances<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kiss the ground at his feet, though the soldiers that guard him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By coating in slime every link of your chain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The people and ye are no longer the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every heart where one flickering ember<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of manhood’s ablaze has contempt for your shame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God’s birthright of freedom for titles and gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_197" id="page_197">{197}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have perished,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their name and their fame and their work shall be cherished<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the cause that they died for, triumphant and grand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shines out, o’er the tombstones of princes forgotten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER" id="EXPLOITS_OF_AN_IRISH_REPORTER"></a>EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">F</span>OR enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, and the ability to
+“get there” in spite of every difficulty and obstacle, the American
+newspaper man is a century ahead of his European brother; but I know of
+one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give even a Yankee points,
+if we are to believe his friends.</p>
+
+<p>Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm with a sharp-pointed
+scissors on the ribs of his umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he chronicled the event
+on the bandages.</p>
+
+<p>When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at an Orange
+demonstration, he took down the chairman’s speech in the mouth of his
+trombone.</p>
+
+<p>He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_198" id="page_198">{198}</a></span> engraven on blocks of
+ice from Smith’s Sound, and he once pencilled the story of a railway
+collision on the wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how the
+mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial limb so soon after
+the disaster, but he never bothers his head about such minor details.</p>
+
+<p>But his greatest phonographic achievement was in Central Africa a few
+years ago. King Mtesa, the dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked
+up from his European guests, among other accomplishments, the art of
+making speeches. It was a new, a delicious recreation to the savage
+soul. Twice a month he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the
+ebon Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central African
+substitute for “hear, hear,” at the proper moment, was served up for
+luncheon on the conclusion of the speech.</p>
+
+<p>Brian heard of this. It became the one burning ambition of his soul to
+take a shorthand note of the Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out
+for Tanganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a dozen sons of
+night he penetrated the African jungle, swam its turgid rivers, evaded
+its hungry tribes, escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of
+adventure and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the king’s
+kraal the evening before one of that monarch’s speeches.</p>
+
+<p>He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a few toes, been once
+half boiled, and on another occasion baked nearly to a sweet and
+toothsome brown; still he had survived.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_199" id="page_199">{199}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, alas! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and these indispensable
+adjuncts of caligraphic civilization were unknown in Mtesa’s territory
+since Stanley had left.</p>
+
+<p>Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect not to be thwarted by
+such trifling obstacles. He hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero
+in jet addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari attendants on
+their hands and knees, and took the speech in chalk upon their naked
+backs.</p>
+
+<p>Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the paper containing the
+speech, furnished the stenographer and his animated note-books with an
+escort to the coast, and triumph would have crowned Brian’s effort but
+for the most striking passages of the oration being lost through one of
+the blacks sitting down on a wet bank before he had been transcribed!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED" id="A_POLITICAL_LESSON_SPOILED"></a>A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">H</span>E was a Boston teacher, and of course had an intellect superior to the
+cut-and-dry theories of instruction that were followed by the common
+herd of schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons; in illustrations
+that should catch the young idea on the fly, as it were. Thus, when he
+wanted to fix in the memories of the youthful scholars the titles of the
+principal reigning monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn’t keep them
+for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, “the Queen of
+England,” “the President of France,” “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_200" id="page_200">{200}</a></span> King of Italy,” “the Emperor
+of Germany,” “the Sultan of Turkey,” and “the Czar of Russia.” Not he.
+He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more individual
+appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. He told Mike, the
+saloon keeper’s son, to know himself in future as the French President;
+Franz Schweibiere became Emperor of Germany; he bestowed royal honors on
+all his most promising pupils, and he felt proudly conscious that he had
+planted firmly in their minds, as part of their own identity, the
+knowledge of the sovereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World’s
+destiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a recent unhappy
+morning the King of Italy held up a greasy hand and piped out, “Please,
+sir, de Sultan of Turkey won’t be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia hit
+him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him!”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION" id="THE_LIONS_LAMENTATION"></a>THE LION’S LAMENTATION.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HEY are marching on Herat, half a million men, or more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Over the frontier they’re swarming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative roar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But grin as if its melody were charming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Friends of the past, where, where are ye all?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great Patience! are ye laughing at the poor old lion’s fall?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Really, the prospect is alarming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_201" id="page_201">{201}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">’Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to ten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Woe is me! the fact is quite contrary;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We might when “English” soldiers came from Irish hill and glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But there’s no recruiting now in Tipperary.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From seaboard of Galway across to Kildare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Except he be a Corydon or Carey.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Am I not your father and your mother?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British lamb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Irving and Arnold your culture will bless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the dudes of London your image will caress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And we’ll be the world to one another.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bennett, Smalley, don’t you hear the marching going on?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is it any wonder that I’m quaking?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Lord! the tortures, the terrors I feel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even my roar has been changed to a squeal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And&mdash;my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That d&mdash;d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_202" id="page_202">{202}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="MEMORIAL_ODE" id="MEMORIAL_ODE"></a>MEMORIAL ODE<br /><br />
+<small>TO THE IRISH DEAD WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE FIFTY YEARS’ REIGN OF VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E meet to-night to greet a name<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Symbolical for fifty years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of England’s guilt and England’s shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Ireland’s blood and Ireland’s tears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mingle with the empty glee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of laugh and cheer from English throat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A new tone in this Jubilee,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A strong, discordant, Irish note.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">What has she done for us or ours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What wrong redressed; relieved what pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in her garlanding of flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We should conceal our Irish chain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When on the dreary roadside lying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were babe and mother faint and dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When heaped were nameless Irish graves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Irish dead paved ocean’s waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When every blast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That swept the mast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fever ship was moaning, sighing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The story of an awful crime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ringing down the aisles of Time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has filled the universe with song&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A deathless dirge of Ireland’s wrong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What act of mercy, gentle, human,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_203" id="page_203">{203}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What deed of grace to prove her woman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What sign gave she that Irish true man<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could treasure in his heart to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A token of her Jubilee?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">She came when but one spring had spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its buds above our dark decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around, among, between the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her idle, pompous journey lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She saw a million graves, but shed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No tear to wash the sin away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before or since what ear hath heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In all our years of dark eclipse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One feeble protest, or a word<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of pity from her queenly lips.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, when our fearsome famine wail<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pierced e’en an Orient monarch’s soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he stretched hand to save the Gael,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her jealous pride returned his dole.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">For she could watch the infant die upon its mother’s shriveled breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But could not bear a stranger’s gem to dim the jewels on her crest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i0">A faithful mother&mdash;so the bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That rends the bleating lamb apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brings it with her cubs to share,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Betrays a fond, maternal heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weeping mother’s side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By hunger’s pangs in roofless homes can mock Victoria’s mother-pride.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_204" id="page_204">{204}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A faithful wife&mdash;from prison tomb appeals the strangled Irish voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert&mdash;poor Myles Joyce.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a><br /></span>
+
+<span class="i0">And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow shrieks in pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At memory of the loved ones lost&mdash;butchered in this half-century’s reign.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the victims of landlord wrath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that bleach the Atlantic’s lonely path;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and ordered back from the scaffold’s gloom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates of madhouse and union tomb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from East to West over every sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who march in her Jubilee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland’s fight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through Famine’s pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our hands and swear to-night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm, through good and ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until the blaze of freedom’s sun illumines every Irish hill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_205" id="page_205">{205}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and foreign throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her own.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_ORANGE_ORATION" id="AN_ORANGE_ORATION"></a>AN ORANGE ORATION.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N no country in either the civilized or the barbaric world can we find
+the counter-type of the Irish Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are
+Frenchmen, whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic from
+Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian Lutheran, when German
+independence was assailed. When the White Czar summons his legions to
+the defence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the tenets of
+the Greek Church takes his place under the eagle standard alongside the
+persecuted believer in the faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as
+steadfast in their support of the “meteor flag of Old England” as any of
+the believers in the motley creeds of that much-religious
+nation&mdash;Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Unitarians,
+Baptists, Episcopalians, or Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant
+nineteenth century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so
+irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of persuasion and the
+voice of reason. A condemnation of Orangeism is unnecessary, but a
+description of one of its votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in
+love with a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, but they
+are valuable accessories to a dime museum. By and by the Orangeman will
+find his natural place<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_206" id="page_206">{206}</a></span> in a side-show, but in the mean time, for the
+benefit of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the prominent
+features, personal and historical, of one of the tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the-way villages in
+Antrim, into which neither intelligence nor common sense has so far
+penetrated. His father was the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife,
+as the countless bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could well
+testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught hatred of everything
+connected with Catholicity. He was told that the cross was a symbol of
+superstition, a Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest
+a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the “Papists” generally a
+lot of poor, benighted idiots, especially created by a benign Providence
+to afford skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He learned that
+England was the most Protestant nation in the world, and consequently
+the greatest; that the “Boyne Water” was the grandest musical
+composition of this or any other age; and that the Rev. R. R. Kane, a
+notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. He had been taught to
+shun everything green as he would the small-pox&mdash;there was only one
+color for a devout Christian to patronize&mdash;orange. God had not decorated
+the trees and fields with orange, because he had reserved that beautiful
+tint for a chosen few, and didn’t wish it to be too common. Of course,
+when Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan in whose
+ranks his father’s head had so often been bandaged. He became an
+Orangeman of the deepest purple<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_207" id="page_207">{207}</a></span> dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural
+and artificial, resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his
+heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to play “Croppers, lie
+down” on the concertina, and to master the mysteries of the jew’s-harp
+to the stirring anthem of “Protestant Boys.” He led insane processions
+on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by “knocking out” an old
+woman who declined to shout “To h&mdash;with the Pope” at his modest request.</p>
+
+<p>He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is a skilful rhetorician,
+of course. I quote his last 12th of July speech, to show the stuff that
+awakens the enthusiasm of his class:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Brethren&mdash;We have met once more to commemorate to-night the memory of
+the great, the glorious, the pious, and the&mdash;the&mdash;the Orange-headed
+William, and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal memory,
+I&mdash;I&mdash;as a matter of fact I&mdash;I&mdash;get upon my feet. (Cheers.) At no time
+in the history of Orangeism did there exist a greater necessity
+to&mdash;to&mdash;to, in short&mdash;drink his memory&mdash;that is to say, to drink&mdash;to
+drink&mdash;to&mdash;oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous applause.) The papishes
+are abroad like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Shall they
+swallow us? (Loud cries of ‘No.’) Our Church has been disestablished,
+and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope’s toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame; but
+are there not thousands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their
+toes&mdash;their big toes&mdash;upon the most fleshy part of Gladstone’s carcass
+this&mdash;this&mdash;this insult to Christianity? (Loud applause.) They have put
+down, to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_208" id="page_208">{208}</a></span> certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious
+gatherings, which used to strike terror to the souls&mdash;of&mdash;of&mdash;well, they
+struck terror all round to somebody or other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants
+won’t allow us to remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more
+nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of the gospel into
+Papists’ heads with bludgeons any longer. (Groans.) The love of God has
+departed from the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries forbid
+believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less than forty shillings.
+(Hisses.) But still, my brethren, we can drink the pious memory of the
+sainted William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), and
+whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny bit stand between us
+and our noble duty? (Shouts of Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill
+your glasses with whiskey and Boyne water. Here’s to the glorious memory
+of the glorious William; here’s to the glorious constitution he gave us;
+here’s to the glorious Boyne water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey
+with which to-night it is allied; here’s to the glorious Queen of
+England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker’s dozen; here’s to
+glorious John Brown, the pillar of the state and the true prototype of
+Martin Luther; to thunder with the Pope, and hell’s bells, artillery,
+bombshells, prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment of
+diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever and ever amen in
+the ears of Davitt and Parnell.” (Frantic applause and several free
+fights.)<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_209" id="page_209">{209}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL" id="SONG_OF_KING_ALCOHOL"></a>SONG OF KING ALCOHOL.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HAT Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday of the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had a rule so universal as I claim?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What conquering banner yet was so far and wide unfurled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As my ensign of destruction and of shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My burning fetters bind every race of human kind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My dominion rules their bodies not alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their future, as their present, is my own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the glass!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet pass!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken dumb.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Roman ass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His tortured slaves in death at last were free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Belongs for all eternity to me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bravest man who broke a human tyrant’s yoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If he once began to worship at my shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to my thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_210" id="page_210">{210}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not give the drunkard time to even think.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, too late, ha! ha! it awakens up in hell!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Despots oft are hated: it is not so with me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Common helots struggle madly to be free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My triumph through the years is told in blood and tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the scaffold, in the dungeon’s dreary gloom.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I whet the murderer’s knife&mdash;rob mother, children, wife&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And built my horrid throne upon the tomb.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS" id="CONTRARY_COGNOMENS"></a>CONTRARY COGNOMENS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">I</span>F you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you’d find yourself mistaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising Bacon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler’s a musician,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Cooper couldn’t hoop a tub with any expedition;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_211" id="page_211">{211}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long’s only four foot six, but Short’s miraculously long;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong’s dying of consumption, but the Weekes continue strong.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It’s strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steel deals in soft goods, Draper’s ware is advertised as hard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or card;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wright’s wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and witty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gray’s black, Black’s red, Green’s brown, and Gay is always on the mope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as soap.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING" id="AN_AESTHETIC_WOOING"></a>AN ÆSTHETIC WOOING.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>NGELINA Seraphina<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wilhelmina Murphy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See on knees here Ebenezer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Julius Cæsar Durphy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’ve forsaken vows I’ve taken<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To a dozen ladies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose and Ella, Annabella,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Mirella Bradys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_212" id="page_212">{212}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What to me now e’er can be now<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hippolita Flanagan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sweet Dora Leonora<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Otherwise O’Branagan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that Hebe Flora Phœbe<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Anastatia Hoolahan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Miranda Alexandra<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May Amanda Woolahan?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Roderigo Paul Diego<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Burke may try his part again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Bernardo Leonardo<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Furey seek your heart again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But be mine, love, as I’m thine, love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Just espouse my cause, my dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I swear I’ll give our heir<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A name to break your jaws, my dear!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM" id="THE_DRUNKARDS_DREAM"></a>THE DRUNKARD’S DREAM.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>E slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven’s sparkling dome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled sky!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hungry and ill, he’d left the town to roam he knew not where;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_213" id="page_213">{213}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgetful of the agony he’d suffered all the day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he stood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was receiving once again the prize his skill had won&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He heard his father blessing God for having such a son!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His fancy changed: he dreamt he stood beneath the rustling trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of the breeze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand flowers were ’neath his feet, rich, beautiful and rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as fair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising blush,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids gush,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered “Yes.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His dream was changed: again he stood&mdash;and she was by his side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Within the little village church to claim her as his bride;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_214" id="page_214">{214}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with pleasure gleam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, hark! that noise! he wakes again to find it but a dream!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where are the pictures of his dream? They’ve vanished one and all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle overhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the very sky seems weeping o’er the joy forever fled!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a limb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to swim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hears another rattle, and another rattle still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now through every nerve there runs a strange and fearful thrill!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him of his breath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep,&mdash;but now in death!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life’s last link,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the drink.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_215" id="page_215">{215}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="FREDERICKS_FOLLY" id="FREDERICKS_FOLLY"></a>FREDERICK’S FOLLY.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>N a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from
+Rathmines,&mdash;which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of
+the Hibernian metropolis,&mdash;there boarded, lodged, and sent out his
+washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young
+gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in
+that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer
+walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day
+whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To
+spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose
+to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the
+clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his
+official signature.</p>
+
+<p>Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was
+also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his
+landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling
+Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired.
+But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a
+quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his
+face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less
+susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty.
+He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He
+would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_216" id="page_216">{216}</a></span> fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine
+weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton &amp;
+Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to
+change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut
+article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a
+countess.</p>
+
+<p>He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having
+time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person.
+He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British
+Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being
+subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four
+dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders.
+Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely
+got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium
+before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not&mdash;well, not quite
+a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly
+martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or
+the&mdash;hem&mdash;nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.</p>
+
+<p>“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial
+artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of&mdash;I mean as the
+raven’s wing.”</p>
+
+<p>Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought
+of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the
+dye.</p>
+
+<p>“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the
+scissors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_217" id="page_217">{217}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed
+sort of a mustache&mdash;what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and
+odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between
+the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the
+coiffeur’s opinion.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a
+beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”</p>
+
+<p>A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of
+your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the
+lather-pot.</p>
+
+<p>They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar
+remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the
+principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed
+with his evil genius.</p>
+
+<p>“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as
+a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”</p>
+
+<p>Alas! He took the Depilatory.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the
+curling-tongs.</p>
+
+<p>No, he wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day.
+Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming
+monotonous. However, he admitted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_218" id="page_218">{218}</a></span> that the speculator who bought his
+teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a
+fortune by the investment.</p>
+
+<p>“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your
+teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look
+gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap.
+Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”</p>
+
+<p>Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic
+talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair
+dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had
+arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every
+now and then <i>en route</i>, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the
+bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He
+was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then
+another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for
+about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the
+last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai,
+he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking
+hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he
+volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know
+him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s
+astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic
+personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the
+house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the
+domestic doorstep, replied<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_219" id="page_219">{219}</a></span> emphatically, “I should rather think so!”
+upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that
+Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting
+his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of
+supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below
+Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred
+gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that
+there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on
+the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested
+himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.</p>
+
+<p>At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning
+sob of fate, the candle went out!</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more
+composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,
+he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little
+Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his
+with envy and chagrin?</p>
+
+<p>He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined
+friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet
+requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his
+jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of
+Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a
+sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He
+tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_220" id="page_220">{220}</a></span> imperial? Why not?
+He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration
+complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little
+Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber&mdash;to dream he had
+Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the
+Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.</p>
+
+<p class="dttsc">. . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when
+Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer&mdash;that last toddy, no
+doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.
+Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of
+civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out
+upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that
+made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the
+last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating
+madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable
+officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a
+square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police
+manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,
+and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with
+a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that
+he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of
+his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other
+assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he
+promptly turned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_221" id="page_221">{221}</a></span> nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched
+forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,
+chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a
+varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded
+them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in
+wild and dripping confusion.</p>
+
+<p>That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an
+excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and
+there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque
+night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut
+lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his
+nose&mdash;cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird
+melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”</p>
+
+<p>It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his
+teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning
+over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his
+curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head
+altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction
+of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its
+growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had
+invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so
+renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of
+a walnut escritoire.</p>
+
+<p>Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had
+anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is
+now another’s.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_222" id="page_222">{222}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONSTABLE_X" id="CONSTABLE_X"></a>CONSTABLE X.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HOSE walk is so stately and grand round the beat?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kisses the book with a resonant smack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he, even he, that great creature, has known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_223" id="page_223">{223}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has even unbended to laughter and sport,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY" id="LUCIFERS_LABORATORY"></a>LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>URROUNDED by bottles and flagons and bowls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Devil pursued his terrible task.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hatred and lust, and all the horde<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when it was brimming with fever and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Another flask in his hand he raised<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doses of poverty, doses of crime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For every region, for every clime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_224" id="page_224">{224}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And then a barrel he seized to fill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With grief and affliction, pain and ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till God’s image became but a senseless log,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the demon yell as each toper fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN" id="THE_MONOPOLISTS_MOAN"></a>THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>M I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_225" id="page_225">{225}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That muscle and brain were contented below;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a very small gift from our riches contents<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But now there’s a muttering startling and strange<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A really absurd and ridiculous plan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To ostracize gold and to dignify man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The base common herd won’t submit any more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a rule that their fathers found proper before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the veriest scum of the gutters invents<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS" id="WITH_THE_GRAND_ARMY_VETERANS"></a>WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.<br /><br />
+<small>AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>NCE again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_226" id="page_226">{226}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mists and clouds of two long decades&mdash;picture visions far away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_227" id="page_227">{227}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_228" id="page_228">{228}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE" id="THE_IRISH_SOLDIER_AT_GRANTS_GRAVE"></a>THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">G</span>REAT chieftain, o’er thy silent clay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grief knows no frontier line to-day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Among the gifts the nation showers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shamrock wreath among the flowers.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A type its emerald leaflets three<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy best attributes will be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faith, Courage, and Humanity.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Courage that with disaster rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mercy to brave but beaten foes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her defence with thee and thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our exiled race were found in line.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With thee we bore the storm and stress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hard-fought retreat and onward press<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_229" id="page_229">{229}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy eagle glances oft might scan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our Celtic features in the van<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When battle surged round Sheridan.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And never poured the crimson flood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mark where desperate valor stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So as your life-stream then we fed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where’er your own brave nation bled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our tears to-day with hers are shed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our grief now sobs with your regrets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our shamrocks fringe your violets.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="MAINE_AND_MAYO" id="MAINE_AND_MAYO"></a>MAINE AND MAYO.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">S</span>IX months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_230" id="page_230">{230}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“I’m very glad to meet ye&mdash;I’m a stranger from Mayo.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_231" id="page_231">{231}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="ig">. . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_232" id="page_232">{232}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH" id="A_SANDY_ROW_SKIRMISH"></a>A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">S</span>ANDY ROW, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in
+Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its
+true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,
+the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from
+prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To
+h&mdash;with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its
+consecrated&mdash;whiskey consecrated&mdash;shore, that Papist foot would be
+carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it
+contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of
+the desecrated pavement.</p>
+
+<p>In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one
+Green&mdash;Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and
+immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread
+as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan
+Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in
+more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional
+anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his
+campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable
+commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,
+but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has
+suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half
+a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_233" id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in
+consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his
+back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,
+banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,
+blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National
+League invaders.</p>
+
+<p>For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners
+and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an
+assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal
+principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no
+salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.</p>
+
+<p>During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of
+Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a
+howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given
+musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent
+continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval
+for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor
+gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a
+short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’
+duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red
+Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached
+the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the
+influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with
+the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_234" id="page_234">{234}</a></span> scales and
+variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in
+scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into
+which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with
+heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,
+and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;
+and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening
+lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear
+at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs
+in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted
+yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the
+thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass
+kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,
+ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that
+you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.</p>
+
+<p>From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there
+isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or
+symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call
+it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about
+four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.</p>
+
+<p>The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to
+this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this
+systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old
+boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_235" id="page_235">{235}</a></span>up culinary
+utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established
+a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been
+exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate
+measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.
+They were adopted.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order&mdash;each
+man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander&mdash;a
+kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously
+maddening marauders!</p>
+
+<p>Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,
+rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.</p>
+
+<p>Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving
+stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.</p>
+
+<p>The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and
+completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a
+marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long
+cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord
+Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes
+and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?</p>
+
+<p>About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis
+commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they
+had got through<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_236" id="page_236">{236}</a></span> the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some
+Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his
+night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly
+raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly
+perfected.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark,&mdash;so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent
+choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle
+rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught
+a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering
+gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a
+step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled
+round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a
+hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,
+and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different
+cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical
+training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,
+paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.</p>
+
+<p>Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,
+like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in
+the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by
+Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of
+the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron
+spirit of Mrs. T.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_237" id="page_237">{237}</a></span> was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower
+of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he
+turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the
+grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels
+off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the
+air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all
+the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon
+his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new
+veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the
+Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been
+witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the
+spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of
+pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and
+the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out
+by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men
+that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with
+pickaxes and shovels.</p>
+
+<p>Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111
+forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a
+tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He
+thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain
+their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for
+carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with
+the contents of a tinker’s budget&mdash;why, he’ll join the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_238" id="page_238">{238}</a></span> Fenians, that’s
+all. They have one motto he appreciates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>HETHER on the scaffold high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or in the battle’s van,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fittest place for man to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is where he dies for man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an
+old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not
+going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.
+1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here lies the body of Billy Green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As true a grand master as ever was seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But although he was green and decidedly fat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">cat.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE" id="THE_PRIEST_WITH_THE_BROGUE"></a>THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.<br /><br />
+<small>A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">D</span>OWN by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_239" id="page_239">{239}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curses in purest American; such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Room for the rest of the languages&mdash;there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naught but profanity ever in vogue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God has ordained they should travel together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunshine and harmony&mdash;natural growth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right down among us he stepped: all the while<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sang at our windows for all they were worth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nobody hunted the right or left bower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deserts put verdure on&mdash;one little flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s <i>thurrum pogue</i><a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_240" id="page_240">{240}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ARAB_WAR_SONG" id="ARAB_WAR_SONG"></a>ARAB WAR SONG.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">A</span>LLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And their valor will scatter his merciless bands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their fury will break on his terrified host<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is melting before our wild charges in spray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_241" id="page_241">{241}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better freedom in death than existence in chains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike swiftly, and spare not&mdash;yon turbanless crowd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK" id="HOBBIES_IN_OUR_BLOCK"></a>HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block
+were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and
+what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a
+completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.
+Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.
+His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his
+place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have
+them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night
+to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.
+He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his
+gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful
+jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby
+through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay
+at the parlor door by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_242" id="page_242">{242}</a></span> ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to
+take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue
+of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen
+variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him
+as a signal to chaw him up&mdash;under such circumstances one don’t feel
+inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.</p>
+
+<p>Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of
+life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of
+the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You
+never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some
+horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to
+envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had
+with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered
+hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power
+sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in
+a sling for a fortnight afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all
+kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded
+slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he
+believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life
+that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest
+his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring
+his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him
+half an hour to sit down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_243" id="page_243">{243}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion
+is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has
+carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in
+a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in
+a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he
+would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he
+has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he
+thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another
+crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred
+or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and
+didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round
+about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the
+mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a
+picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked
+before&mdash;that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s
+sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking
+attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve
+his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has
+travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic
+arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that
+he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not
+to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.
+With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going
+over his half-dozen ordinary albums it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_244" id="page_244">{244}</a></span> is really magnificent to be able
+to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his
+remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he
+can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs
+of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN" id="NOT_A_JOHN_L_SULLIVAN"></a>NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> HAVE never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.</p>
+
+<p>I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.</p>
+
+<p>There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,
+who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my
+marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my
+string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>I thirsted for his blood.</p>
+
+<p>I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my
+part&mdash;in fact, it took several parts of me.</p>
+
+<p>I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled
+my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to
+complete the structure.</p>
+
+<p>Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of
+boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was
+illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,&mdash;the position.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_245" id="page_245">{245}</a></span> Figure
+2,&mdash;one for his nob. Figure 3,&mdash;the body blow. Figure 4,&mdash;the return.
+Figure 5,&mdash;the upper cut. Figure 6,&mdash;the cross-counter.</p>
+
+<p>I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,
+till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of
+P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or
+whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could
+have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”</p>
+
+<p>But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults
+with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed
+my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered
+“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the
+bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders
+and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a
+conquering hero.</p>
+
+<p>At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment
+had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself
+to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me
+when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>He came.</p>
+
+<p>I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the
+proper figures for the various stages of the battle.</p>
+
+<p>I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the
+improvised ring, tied a handker<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_246" id="page_246">{246}</a></span>chief for a belt round my waist, and
+wanted to shake hands <i>a la</i> Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.</p>
+
+<p>Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another
+figure&mdash;which happened to be me.</p>
+
+<p>“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,
+because it resulted in two or three for <i>my</i> nob, and while I was trying
+to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,
+“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the
+regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something
+came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground
+with the back of my head.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called
+“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had
+to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my
+left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill
+soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I
+sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the
+other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared
+“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp&mdash;“He won’t let me,” before there
+was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,
+and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.</p>
+
+<p>I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen
+to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green
+sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more
+diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_247" id="page_247">{247}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY" id="THE_LINGUIST_OF_THE_LIFFEY"></a>THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="smlr">[Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few
+years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,
+who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of
+all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a
+student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and
+bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from
+a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of
+it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that
+crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest
+knocked him out in one short round.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HERE once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dr. Blank we shall call him&mdash;a Crichton was he;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a science or language earth ever has known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany&mdash;these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theology, Medicine, Strategy&mdash;pshaw!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which left intellects minor some eras behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dons of the College&mdash;our doctor could boast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An intimate knowledge of every tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_248" id="page_248">{248}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not his be the blame&mdash;no, the odium must rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA" id="A_WINDY_DAY_AT_CABRA"></a>A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span> WOULD sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under
+the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so
+dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs
+up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for
+that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there
+that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home
+are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the
+executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic
+dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a
+conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not
+be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed
+a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his
+drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_249" id="page_249">{249}</a></span> of the day. I had
+barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey
+wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a
+red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a
+miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,
+a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various
+stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied
+articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with
+thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the
+two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags
+and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to
+guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced
+to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the
+odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the
+kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every
+contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started
+homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such
+stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear
+of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the
+irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was
+blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few
+dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney
+pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a
+garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_250" id="page_250">{250}</a></span>
+native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the
+situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,
+and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude
+of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,
+vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at
+irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and
+such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to
+count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It
+would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my
+top-coat was like!</p>
+
+<h2><a name="PEGGY_OSHEA" id="PEGGY_OSHEA"></a>PEGGY O’SHEA.<br /><br />
+<small>AN IRISH SERENADE.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4"><span class="letra">T</span>HE pale moon is beaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The bright stars are gleaming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Awake from thy dreaming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Acushla, arise!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For sure the moon’s light, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Though vivid an’ bright, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is but darkest night, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Compared with your eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Glimmerin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shimmerin’,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">Down in the river there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_251" id="page_251">{251}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4">See, your own thrue love<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Is waitin’ for you, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So waken anew, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ gladden my sight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Don’t keep me quakin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">All the long night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Quiverin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shiverin’,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza2">
+<span class="i0">Faith it’s Decimber, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Freezes me, teases me&mdash;darlin’ don’t stay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza1">
+<span class="i4">This morn had you been, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With me, you’d have seen, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A new dress of green, love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I bought&mdash;for, you mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But last week you said, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You hated the red, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So get out of bed, dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">An’ let down the blind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Shyly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Slyly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creep to the window now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_252" id="page_252">{252}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Why have you waited<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">So long, whin you stated<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">To me that you hated<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">The red of our foes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">While you are keepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Me here with your sleepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">The color is creepin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">All over my nose!<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Face it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">Chase it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meet it with bravery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Och, you are there now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">So purty and fair now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">I raley declare, now<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">I’m murthered outright;<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">My mouth seems like butter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">I hardly can mutter<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">A sintince, or utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">A word, love, to-night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">Thumpin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i14">An’ bumpin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_253" id="page_253">{253}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT" id="THE_BOSTON_CARRIERS_PLAINT"></a>THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was one poor limping creature&mdash;the embodiment of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I questioned him&mdash;this blighted one&mdash;I asked him what the reason<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_254" id="page_254">{254}</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Don’t my uniform tell you that I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Am of the unfortunate band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom you see day by day passing by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never pausing a moment to stand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, in one perpetual round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forever are marching, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seems that while one of us stays overground<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fate ordains he shall never be still.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Tis hard when the bright golden sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smiles out from a clear azure sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till his glory has gone and passed by.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And e’en along green country lanes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who would care to be tramping all day?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Then why do you wonder to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">An unlucky sad mortal complain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or say, are you looking for smiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From a fellow who feels on the rack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After walking some twenty odd miles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On a path like a porcupine’s back?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“They say that the Muscovite knout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the back of a troublesome peasant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When wielded by hands that are stout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is decidedly very unpleasant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_255" id="page_255">{255}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Caused aught but delightful sensations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what were their tortures of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Compared to our new innovations?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“No martyr that ever yet died<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In those times that have long passed away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My feet are denuded of skin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My toes every one are disjointed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the most of our pavement is pointed!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save where an occasional flaw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leaves a hole in to gather the rain&mdash;”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That emptied a neighboring tavern,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had planted one foot on a peak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While the other was lost in a cavern!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then his language assumed such a tone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And one not by any means sweeter&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That they couldn’t be put into metre.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thus my sad narrative ends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As I left the poor tortured one raving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_256" id="page_256">{256}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS" id="APROPOS_OF_THE_CENSUS"></a>APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>F they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall
+have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s
+mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist
+Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the
+census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and
+on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her
+mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who
+is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage
+in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another
+ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan
+retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last
+column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical
+expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she
+filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,
+blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages
+afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be
+known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively
+on that occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary
+difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of
+them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she
+threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_257" id="page_257">{257}</a></span> and her sitting
+weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a
+compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity
+is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,&mdash;occasionally.”</p>
+
+<p>If Timmins’s paper be not called for soon he will occupy the abnormal
+position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is
+fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on
+figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her
+appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of
+adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not
+called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or
+so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her
+record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful
+figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at
+that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years
+ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon
+and bottle-feeding.</p>
+
+<p>The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is
+the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it
+for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a
+commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey
+without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and
+lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the
+corner into our street on his return from a mont<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_258" id="page_258">{258}</a></span>h’s absence he is the
+central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young
+Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his
+arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in
+his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.
+He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities
+until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.
+The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success
+as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal
+signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we
+call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,
+John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or
+Theodore&mdash;Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter
+fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we
+feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.
+“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or
+an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you
+short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We
+have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s
+at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,
+and&mdash;” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and
+knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be
+followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some
+of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_259" id="page_259">{259}</a></span> some refuge
+to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling
+whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be
+left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.</p>
+
+<p>But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a
+father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper
+should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist&mdash;there was another
+Robinson <i>en route</i>. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent
+the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came&mdash;in twos, in threes,
+in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,
+and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast
+in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt
+like Noah&mdash;only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the
+dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,
+and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers
+present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had
+been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room
+was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one
+corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the
+twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling
+with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church
+yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and
+he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?
+Send me a volume, four hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_260" id="page_260">{260}</a></span> pages, bound in morocco, forty names on
+a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two
+or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m
+ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,
+let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”
+and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson
+was at home this census time.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN" id="NEW_ENGLANDS_MARKSMEN"></a>NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">R</span>ANK on rank they march together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the lanes and o’er the heather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rhythmic ringing beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of their measured swinging feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music bears in martial tone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the land they call their own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy land that proudly boasts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not coerced, unwilling hosts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But around her throne can feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts whose love no bribes retain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hands that never strike in vain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the fields of yellow grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through the woods of leafy green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here and there on many a plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are their snowy targets seen;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the mountains echo back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their peaks the rifles’ crack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_261" id="page_261">{261}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Freedom knows how keen of eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Firm of nerve and quick of finger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the marksmen brave who vie<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the skill they freely bring her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bunker Hill and Concord tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have won their laurels well.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And should war assail our shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still to guard it ever ready<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As their fathers were of yore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calm, yet eager, true and steady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are the loyal ranks that play<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But at mimic strife to-day.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN" id="A_MIXED_ANTIQUARIAN"></a>A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HEY have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society
+rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.
+E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina
+cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.
+R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical
+instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a
+sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the
+bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of
+“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in
+which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment
+might be dangerous. It might have led<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_262" id="page_262">{262}</a></span> to revolution, and it wouldn’t be
+logical&mdash;or geological&mdash;to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific
+symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay
+ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of
+antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly
+mastodon.</p>
+
+<p>I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered
+during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour
+or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been
+kind enough to label them&mdash;“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land
+Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the
+Bone Age,” etc.</p>
+
+<p>I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement
+in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell
+what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the
+“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,
+with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been
+told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned
+not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery
+gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the
+whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be
+inspired by the sight of this&mdash;this&mdash;this ancient weapon&mdash;it is
+evidently a spear-head&mdash;which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic
+warrior of old has probably pierced<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_263" id="page_263">{263}</a></span> many a proud invader’s breast. This
+spear-head, ladies and gentlemen&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty
+bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some
+repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the
+pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to
+finish a job outside!”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="JONESS_UMBRELLA" id="JONESS_UMBRELLA"></a>JONES’S UMBRELLA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HERE has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past
+week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the
+whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the
+atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable
+character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth
+wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the
+heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses
+of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to
+have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in
+view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a
+scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar
+continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,
+principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford
+shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of
+an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,
+but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_264" id="page_264">{264}</a></span>turb a seam in it.
+It has only one defect. Given sufficient space&mdash;say Yellowstone Park,
+and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when
+Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those
+occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left
+their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the
+umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower
+that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that
+umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the
+street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated
+arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the
+direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones
+held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones
+held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family
+quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops
+that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of
+confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and
+a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed
+and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,
+dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously
+about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It
+was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few
+shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and
+tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed
+by his coat-tails, and sat down once or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_265" id="page_265">{265}</a></span> twice quite unexpectedly in
+Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let
+the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He
+hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow
+restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA" id="LESSONS_IN_THE_FRENCH_DRAMA"></a>LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has
+nearly done for Guffin.</p>
+
+<p>Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his
+nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows
+much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is
+poetic, she is romantic&mdash;in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,
+and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion
+with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than
+soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the
+prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money&mdash;so far,
+in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts
+it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,
+in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden&mdash;Mrs.
+Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no
+place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre
+when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_266" id="page_266">{266}</a></span>blighted the future of an
+ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of
+pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite
+fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank&mdash;a sort
+of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker
+has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no
+longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future
+porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,
+and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of
+sausages.</p>
+
+<p>The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her
+appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a
+martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.
+They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically
+and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the
+Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most
+vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.
+would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,
+housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,
+donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a
+hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,
+stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning
+to get gray with such orders as&mdash;“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval
+noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et
+demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head
+in the straw, and wonder why he was born.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_267" id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame
+aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.
+Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French
+at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told
+him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how
+Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron
+Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter
+performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is
+ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be
+a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell
+on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find
+it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a
+half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin
+can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the
+point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch
+a tent on.</p>
+
+<p>Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and
+when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is
+disappointing.</p>
+
+<p>But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might
+be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very
+much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and
+death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was
+leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against
+her beating heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_268" id="page_268">{268}</a></span> the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes
+turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey
+unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to
+squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the
+only seat that could accommodate her&mdash;the sofa, and looked as
+consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.
+Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched
+him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself
+wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,
+and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a
+half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or
+less, he broke into rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a
+pig in a nightmare?”</p>
+
+<p>“Pig!” shrieked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of
+you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.
+Julia, order the carriage.”</p>
+
+<p>Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl
+responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.</p>
+
+<p>“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s
+Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you
+have a rasher?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_269" id="page_269">{269}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,
+Julia, to quit this abode of&mdash;of&mdash;this abode of&mdash;this maison du diable,
+there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal
+Guffin.</p>
+
+<p>“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be
+in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”</p>
+
+<p>“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up
+la chapeau de mon pere.”</p>
+
+<p>“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.
+And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your
+French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.
+You’ve upset me so much with your d&mdash;&mdash;d rubbishy parley-vooing and
+moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with
+a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if
+you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know
+what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll
+put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front
+door-step all day. D&mdash;&mdash;n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next
+Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll
+begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let
+folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every
+house for two miles around.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their
+French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and
+child flung themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_270" id="page_270">{270}</a></span> upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped
+themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes
+out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the
+elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived
+this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is
+so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution
+of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for
+a shutter.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE" id="CALCRAFT_AND_PRICE"></a>CALCRAFT AND PRICE.<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a><br /><br />
+<small>A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">O</span>H! England’s the gem of the waters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pride of the foam-crested sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are always contented and free!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unknown are all want and starvation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her subjects are strangers to vice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bulwarks of this model nation<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wherever this proud nation’s standard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unfurls its red folds to the light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of freedom, and progress, and right.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_271" id="page_271">{271}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Calcraft and Governor Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wherever their footsteps have trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the aid of the bayonet and cannon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They’ve planted the altar of God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the teachers of heretic notions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have been silent and quiet as mice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear they should pay their devotions<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or breathes there a serf who would mutter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With a sound word or two of advice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if Irish, he soon will discover<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The logic of Calcraft and Price!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, horror! you might have been given<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A Republican birthright to own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thank God, that your blood is untainted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You’re subjects of England&mdash;how nice!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With Calcraft or Governor Price!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_272" id="page_272">{272}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE" id="ENTITLED_TO_A_RAISE"></a>ENTITLED TO A RAISE.<br /><br />
+<small>SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HIS is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His blood was cool&mdash;(discipline’s rule)&mdash;he made no moan, so he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_273" id="page_273">{273}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is silly, he is loyal,&mdash;he is all a Sub should be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING" id="THE_POSTMANS_WOOING"></a>THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.<br /><br />
+<small>THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.</small></h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">J</span>OHN THOMPSON was a postman who<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though not deeply read, ’tis true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was still a Man of Letters.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He paid attention to one Kate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Maria Julia Jervis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she did not appreciate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">John Thompson’s Civil Service.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_274" id="page_274">{274}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor let my love-suit fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And don’t Despatch this Mail.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But she replied, in accents grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">“I love you not&mdash;decamp!”<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he spoke again&mdash;she gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her foot an Extra Stamp.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And cried, “My anger you awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your speech on insult borders,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I’m poor, but I would scorn to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your vile Post-office Orders.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And moaned in accents shivery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pray pardon its Delivery.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He left the room with footsteps slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A bitter lesson taught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then to counteract the blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A pillar-box he sought.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He felt how foolish was the tact<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In courtship he had boasted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And recognized the solemn fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That he was badly Posted.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_275" id="page_275">{275}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER" id="SONNETS_TO_A_SHOEMAKER"></a>SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">T</span>HE cobbler’s always cheerful, though<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His path of life be crost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He does not tear his hair in woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whene’er his all is lost.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He welts a lot, but not the wife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With whom his lot is cast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still faithful to the last.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Onward his motto, aye, he strives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To grasp some other feat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the dullest times contrives<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Somehow to make ends meet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world may smite him without cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He never shuns its whacks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And seldom grumbles at the laws<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That regulate his tax.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We know but little of the good<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His many acts reveal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their understandings heal.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And a much higher motive yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His generous heart controls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would not see that saint forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their perishable souls.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_276" id="page_276">{276}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS" id="A_COMMERCIAL_CRISIS"></a>A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">T</span>HE financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest
+shanty of Jones, in our street.</p>
+
+<p>“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at
+breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with
+the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the
+domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones
+works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t
+say less; he was afraid to say more.</p>
+
+<p>“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”</p>
+
+<p>Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour
+in question.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished
+to know where you spent your evening.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a
+kind of a description of&mdash;you don’t understand these things, Maria, but
+we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I
+thought&mdash;that is, we thought&mdash;a few of us thought, you know&mdash;a whole lot
+of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand&mdash;to&mdash;to
+avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you consulted, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we
+decided on a whole lot of things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_277" id="page_277">{277}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“What time did you decide on breaking up?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish
+financiers&mdash;Baron Rothschild, and&mdash;and the rest of the Rothschilds, and
+the chief rabbis&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve
+been working the oracle&mdash;and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here
+Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining
+matters as lucidly as was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the
+almshouse before you die, at the rate&mdash;the poor rate&mdash;you’re going on.
+What else?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the
+monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal
+of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six
+per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things
+have gone so far that, that&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took
+your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the
+scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that
+you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about
+the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the
+proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled
+‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in
+the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians
+and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin,
+the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_278" id="page_278">{278}</a></span> down in the coal scuttle,
+and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed
+some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried
+to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning;
+and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your
+coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin,
+you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red
+hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I
+have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for
+five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any
+longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed
+commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a
+remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it
+is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in
+a quiet kitchen in South Boston.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS" id="AT_THE_COLLEGE_SPORTS"></a>AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">H</span>EIGHO for the morning, murky and dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, heedless of threatening cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ventured to visit the green College park,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mingled along with the crowd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am almost now on insanity’s brink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And this I attribute to<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either a fairy attired in pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or an angel whose robe was blue.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_279" id="page_279">{279}</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The world considered my heart was flint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And futile were womanly wiles&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Glances and glittering smiles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My journey of life to go through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To say nothing of beauty in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bachelor’s buttons and fare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That Benedicts weepingly share.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To join the Hymeneal crew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or a lovely commander in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For frivolous chatter and talk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was interested in every race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Jump and hurdle and walk;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of course it can hardly be true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the mile by a stayer in blue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It’s over now, and I feel quite wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For I mean in futurity’s days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I go to races to cover my eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With glasses to temper my gaze,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_280" id="page_280">{280}</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or equally dangerous blue.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE" id="A_MUSICAL_REVENGE"></a>A MUSICAL REVENGE.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">I</span>’M sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean
+of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is
+oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to
+sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed
+with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way,
+and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with
+forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly
+residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly
+utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to
+undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be
+a welcome change.</p>
+
+<p>But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief.
+For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers
+of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the
+trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his
+frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a
+fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations
+on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had <i>one</i> night from<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_281" id="page_281">{281}</a></span> me. They
+won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the
+melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of
+his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my
+cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the
+tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising
+for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed
+successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured
+the presence of a fife and drum&mdash;principally drum&mdash;band from a Grand
+Army post.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time
+all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to
+quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants
+of the disturbed district.</p>
+
+<p>But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the
+perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt,
+till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or
+instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering
+locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them,
+as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each
+artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The
+bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if
+all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s
+interference<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_282" id="page_282">{282}</a></span> with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney”
+with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled
+like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had
+never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The
+melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band
+wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of
+its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice
+assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of
+the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division
+of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at
+suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand
+finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within
+half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a
+lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them
+another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.</p>
+
+<h2><a name="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT" id="A_LIAR_LAID_OUT"></a>A LIAR LAID OUT.</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">W</span>E have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who
+certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give
+weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London
+<i>Times</i> in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The
+whoppers that spreader of lies<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_283" id="page_283">{283}</a></span> and light can tell would raise the hair
+on the head of an Egyptian mummy.</p>
+
+<p>But he met his match last week.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an
+acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of
+course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing
+and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my
+friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that
+he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the
+truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in
+him&mdash;very much in him&mdash;it’s impossible to get it out of him.</p>
+
+<p>I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I
+regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future
+member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all
+there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that
+Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured
+it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the
+Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a
+strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen
+from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him
+at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden
+legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was
+smoking<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_284" id="page_284">{284}</a></span> it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of
+teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the
+regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own
+gums. He showed it to Dipps.</p>
+
+<p>I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He
+exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured
+out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of
+the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life,
+a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express
+purpose of making that stick.</p>
+
+<p>The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had
+another walking-stick at home&mdash;made out of the thigh bone of the
+engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to
+carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and
+would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising
+from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler
+in cold weather to warm himself.</p>
+
+<p>Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be
+put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He
+called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the
+centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a
+diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was
+worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic
+shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_285" id="page_285">{285}</a></span> had passed into Dipps’s
+hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first
+met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel
+Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say
+anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if
+you’re able.”</p>
+
+<p>Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t
+squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary&mdash;it was
+almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a
+companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the
+assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been
+divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated,
+and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom
+Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent
+of the New York <i>Herald</i> Central African tourist pumped that saline
+particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling
+in the interest which it must inspire.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have,
+that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic
+treasure?”</p>
+
+<p>“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the
+Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he
+embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley
+<i>didn’t</i> shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_286" id="page_286">{286}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<h2><a name="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE" id="MULROONEY_A_TROOPERS_TALE"></a>MULROONEY.&mdash;A TROOPER’S TALE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="iq"><span class="letra">W</span>E were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_287" id="page_287">{287}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">“By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_288" id="page_288">{288}</a></span>”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain’s trail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how matters stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for their blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The captain played his cards with skill&mdash;his triumph almost came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Irish hearts are always trumps in war’s uncertain game;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices nigh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell o’er and o’er the story of Mulrooney and the spy.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish
+newspapers, was debated in Parliament, and formed the subject of rich
+comic cartoons in <i>Pat</i>, the <i>Weekly News</i>, the <i>Weekly Freeman</i>, and
+<i>United Ireland</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the
+Ribbon or Whiteboy avenger of landlord oppression.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the
+Speaker or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to preside
+for twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a debate, in the
+course of which the Irish members would raise points of order every five
+minutes or so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, executed at Manchester,
+England, for their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy,
+two Fenian leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies
+being refused to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the
+occasion of a demonstration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> On this day William Philip Allen, Michael O’Brien, and
+Michael Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two
+Fenian leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried into
+effect it was not believed that the first political execution since that
+of Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held at the Old
+Swan Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but their messenger
+brought news of the execution instead.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Allen&mdash;nineteen years old.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> O’Brien&mdash;A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher’s
+Irish Brigade.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Larkin&mdash;An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on
+Jan. 23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished
+themselves by their frantic efforts to escape from the building.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to
+Ireland. On the morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses
+above was found posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of
+Ireland. The poem had previously appeared in an American paper.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after
+he had been executed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Give me a kiss.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a
+British jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be
+remembered for years.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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