ALLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doomKnells 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 freeAs the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;And their valor will scatter his merciless bandsAs the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,Their fury will break on his terrified hostWith the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant prideHe would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghastAs bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy arrayIs 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 crowdSought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
ALLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doomKnells 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 freeAs the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;And their valor will scatter his merciless bandsAs the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,Their fury will break on his terrified hostWith the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant prideHe would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghastAs bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy arrayIs 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 crowdSought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
ALLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doomKnells 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 freeAs the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;And their valor will scatter his merciless bandsAs the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,Their fury will break on his terrified hostWith the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.
Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant prideHe would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghastAs bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy arrayIs 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 crowdSought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
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 aferocious 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 itis 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.
IHAVE 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 handsa laSullivan 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 formynob, 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.
[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.]
[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 knownBut he’d mastered so well he could call them his own—Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany—theseWere 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 mindWhich left intellects minor some eras behind.’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the mostThe Dons of the College—our doctor could boastAn intimate knowledge of every tongueEver 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.
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 knownBut he’d mastered so well he could call them his own—Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany—theseWere 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 mindWhich left intellects minor some eras behind.’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the mostThe Dons of the College—our doctor could boastAn intimate knowledge of every tongueEver 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.
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 knownBut he’d mastered so well he could call them his own—Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany—theseWere 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 mindWhich left intellects minor some eras behind.’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the mostThe Dons of the College—our doctor could boastAn intimate knowledge of every tongueEver 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.
IWOULD 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 ceremoniesof 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 theirnative 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!
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 loveIs 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 waitedSo long, whin you statedTo me that you hatedThe 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, nowI’m murthered outright;My mouth seems like butter,I hardly can mutterA sintince, or utterA 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 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 loveIs 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 waitedSo long, whin you statedTo me that you hatedThe 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, nowI’m murthered outright;My mouth seems like butter,I hardly can mutterA sintince, or utterA 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 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 loveIs 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 waitedSo long, whin you statedTo me that you hatedThe 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, nowI’m murthered outright;My mouth seems like butter,I hardly can mutterA sintince, or utterA 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 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 amainWas 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 reasonOf his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowlingAround the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:—“Don’t my uniform tell you that IAm 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, untilIt seems that while one of us stays overgroundFate ordains he shall never be still.“’Tis hard when the bright golden sunSmiles out from a clear azure sky,To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be doneTill 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 hearAn 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 smilesFrom a fellow who feels on the rack,After walking some twenty odd milesOn 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 diedIn 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 flawLeaves a hole in to gather the rain—”Here my comrade gave vent to a shriekThat 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 groanThat 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 friendsWould survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
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 amainWas 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 reasonOf his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowlingAround the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:—“Don’t my uniform tell you that IAm 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, untilIt seems that while one of us stays overgroundFate ordains he shall never be still.“’Tis hard when the bright golden sunSmiles out from a clear azure sky,To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be doneTill 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 hearAn 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 smilesFrom a fellow who feels on the rack,After walking some twenty odd milesOn 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 diedIn 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 flawLeaves a hole in to gather the rain—”Here my comrade gave vent to a shriekThat 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 groanThat 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 friendsWould survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
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 amainWas 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 reasonOf his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowlingAround the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:—
“Don’t my uniform tell you that IAm 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, untilIt seems that while one of us stays overgroundFate ordains he shall never be still.
“’Tis hard when the bright golden sunSmiles out from a clear azure sky,To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be doneTill 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 hearAn 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 smilesFrom a fellow who feels on the rack,After walking some twenty odd milesOn 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 diedIn 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 flawLeaves a hole in to gather the rain—”
Here my comrade gave vent to a shriekThat 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 groanThat 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 friendsWould survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
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 enteredsome 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 Robinsonen 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 hundredpages, 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.
RANK on rank they march together,Through the lanes and o’er the heather,And the rhythmic ringing beatOf their measured swinging feetMusic bears in martial toneTo the land they call their own.Happy land that proudly boasts,Not coerced, unwilling hosts,But around her throne can feelHearts 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 backFrom their peaks the rifles’ crack.Freedom knows how keen of eye,Firm of nerve and quick of finger,Are the marksmen brave who vieIn the skill they freely bring her.Bunker Hill and Concord tellThey have won their laurels well.And should war assail our shore,Still to guard it ever readyAs their fathers were of yore.Calm, yet eager, true and steady,Are the loyal ranks that playBut at mimic strife to-day.
RANK on rank they march together,Through the lanes and o’er the heather,And the rhythmic ringing beatOf their measured swinging feetMusic bears in martial toneTo the land they call their own.Happy land that proudly boasts,Not coerced, unwilling hosts,But around her throne can feelHearts 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 backFrom their peaks the rifles’ crack.Freedom knows how keen of eye,Firm of nerve and quick of finger,Are the marksmen brave who vieIn the skill they freely bring her.Bunker Hill and Concord tellThey have won their laurels well.And should war assail our shore,Still to guard it ever readyAs their fathers were of yore.Calm, yet eager, true and steady,Are the loyal ranks that playBut at mimic strife to-day.
RANK on rank they march together,Through the lanes and o’er the heather,And the rhythmic ringing beatOf their measured swinging feetMusic bears in martial toneTo the land they call their own.Happy land that proudly boasts,Not coerced, unwilling hosts,But around her throne can feelHearts 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 backFrom their peaks the rifles’ crack.
Freedom knows how keen of eye,Firm of nerve and quick of finger,Are the marksmen brave who vieIn the skill they freely bring her.Bunker Hill and Concord tellThey have won their laurels well.
And should war assail our shore,Still to guard it ever readyAs their fathers were of yore.Calm, yet eager, true and steady,Are the loyal ranks that playBut at mimic strife to-day.
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 ledto 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 piercedmany 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!”
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 ortwice 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.
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 Guffinblighted 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 themselvesupon 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.