True love is that which never can be lost:Though cast away, alone and ownerless,Like a strayed child, that wandering, misses mostWhen night comes down its mother's last caress;True love dies not when banished and forgot,But, solitary, barters still with HeavenThe scanty share of joy cast in its lotFor joys to the beloved freely given.Love, smiling, stands afar to watch and seeEach blessing it has bought, like angel's kiss,Fall on the loved one's face, who ne'er may knowAt what strange cost thus, overflowingly,His cup is filled, or how its depth of blissDoth give the measure of another's woe.
True love is that which never can be lost:Though cast away, alone and ownerless,Like a strayed child, that wandering, misses mostWhen night comes down its mother's last caress;
True love dies not when banished and forgot,But, solitary, barters still with HeavenThe scanty share of joy cast in its lotFor joys to the beloved freely given.
Love, smiling, stands afar to watch and seeEach blessing it has bought, like angel's kiss,Fall on the loved one's face, who ne'er may knowAt what strange cost thus, overflowingly,His cup is filled, or how its depth of blissDoth give the measure of another's woe.
As this happens to be the solitary one among Miss Mulholland's sonnets, which in the arrangement of the quatrains varies slightly from the most orthodox tradition of this pharisee of song, I will give another specimen, prettily named "Among the Boughs."
High on a gnarled and mossy forest bough,Dreaming, I hang between the earth and sky,The golden moon through leafy mysteryGazing aslant at me with glowing brow.And since all living creatures slumber now,O nightingale, save only thou and I,Tell me the secret of thine ecstacy,That none may know save only I and thou.Alas, all vainly doth my heart entreat;Thy magic pipe unfolds but to the moonWhat wonders thee in faëry worlds befell:To her is sung thy midnight-music sweet,And ere she wearies of thy mellow tune,She hath thy secret, and will guard it well!
High on a gnarled and mossy forest bough,Dreaming, I hang between the earth and sky,The golden moon through leafy mysteryGazing aslant at me with glowing brow.And since all living creatures slumber now,O nightingale, save only thou and I,Tell me the secret of thine ecstacy,That none may know save only I and thou.
Alas, all vainly doth my heart entreat;Thy magic pipe unfolds but to the moonWhat wonders thee in faëry worlds befell:To her is sung thy midnight-music sweet,And ere she wearies of thy mellow tune,She hath thy secret, and will guard it well!
Unstinted as our extracts have been, there are poems here by the score over which our choice has wavered. Our selection has been made partly with a view to the illustration of the variety and versatility displayed by this new poet in matter and form; and on this principle we are tempted to quote "Girlhood at Midnight" as the only piece of blank verse in Miss Mulholland's repertory, to show how musical, how far from blank, she makes that most difficult and perilous measure. Butwe must put a restraint on ourselves, and just give one more sample, of the achievements of the author of "The Little Flower Seekers" and "The Wild Birds of Killeevy," in what an old writer calls "the melifluous meeters of poesie." This last is called "A Rebuke." Was there ever a sweeter or gentler rebuke?
Why are you so sad? (sing the little birds, the little birds,)All the sky is blue,We are in our branches, yonder are the herds,And the sun is on the dew;Everything is merry, (sing the happy little birds,)Everything but you!Fire is on the hearthstone, the ship is on the wave,Pretty eggs are in the nest,Yonder sits a mother smiling at a grave,With a baby at her breast;And Christ was on the earth, and the sinner He forgaveIs with Him in His rest.We shall droop our wings, (pipes the throstle on the tree,)When everything is done:Time unfurleth yours, that you soar eternallyIn the regions of the sun.When our day is over, (sings the blackbird in the lea,)Yours is but begun.Then why are you so sad? (warble all the little birds,)While the sky is blue,Brooding over phantoms and vexing about wordsThat never can be true;Everything is merry, (trill the happy, happy birds,)Everything but you!
Why are you so sad? (sing the little birds, the little birds,)All the sky is blue,We are in our branches, yonder are the herds,And the sun is on the dew;Everything is merry, (sing the happy little birds,)Everything but you!
Fire is on the hearthstone, the ship is on the wave,Pretty eggs are in the nest,Yonder sits a mother smiling at a grave,With a baby at her breast;And Christ was on the earth, and the sinner He forgaveIs with Him in His rest.
We shall droop our wings, (pipes the throstle on the tree,)When everything is done:Time unfurleth yours, that you soar eternallyIn the regions of the sun.When our day is over, (sings the blackbird in the lea,)Yours is but begun.
Then why are you so sad? (warble all the little birds,)While the sky is blue,Brooding over phantoms and vexing about wordsThat never can be true;Everything is merry, (trill the happy, happy birds,)Everything but you!
The setting of these jewels is almost worthy of them. The book is brought out with that faultless taste which has helped to win for the firm of No. 1 Paternoster Sq., such fame as poets' publishers. A large proportion of contemporary poetry of the highest name, including till lately the Laureate's, has appeared under the auspices of Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., who seem to have expended special care on the production of "Vagrant Verses."
And now, as we have let these poems chiefly speak for themselves, enough has been said. We do not hesitate to add in conclusion, that those among us with pretensions to literary culture, who do not hasten to contribute to the exceptional success which awaits a work such as even our brief account proves this work to be, will so far have failed in their duty towards Irish genius. For this book more than any that we have yet received from its author's hand—nay, more than any that we can hope to receive from her, since this is the consummate flower of her best years—will serve to secure for the name of Rosa Mulholland an enduring place among the most richly gifted of the daughters of Erin.
Rev. Matthew Russell, S. J.
Dublin, 1886.
Confidenceis a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.
A critic is a judge: and more, he is a judge who knows better than any author how his book should have been written; better than the artist how his picture should have been painted; better than the musician how his music should have been composed; better than the preacher how his sermon ought to have been arranged; better than the Lord Chancellor how he should decide in Equity; better than Sir Frederick Roberts how he should have pursued Ayoob Khan; better than the whole Cabinet how they should govern Ireland; and far better than the Pope how he should guard the deposit of faith. This, no doubt, needs a high culture, a many-sided genius, and the speciality of an expert in all subjects of human intelligence and action. But all that goes for nothing with a true critic. He is never daunted; never at a loss. If he is wrong, he is never the worse, for he criticises anonymously. Sometimes, indeed, the trade is dangerous. A well-known author of precocious literary copiousness, whose volumes contain an "Appendix of Authors quoted" almost as long as the catalogue of the Alexandrian Library, was once invited, maliciously we are afraid, to dine in a select party of specialists, on whose manors the author had been sporting without license. Not only was the jury packed, but the debate was organized with malice aforethought. Each in turn plucked and plucked until the critic was reduced to the Platonic man—animal bipes implume.
Addison says, somewhere in theSpectator, that ridicule is assumed superiority. Criticism is asserted superiority. Sometimes it may be justified, as when the shoemaker told Titian that he had stitched the shoe of a Doge of Venice in the wrong place. Sometimes it is not equally to be justified, as in the critics of the Divine Government of the world, to whom Butler in his "Analogy" meekly says that, if they only knew the whole system of all things, with all the reasons of them, and the last end to which all things and reasons are directed, they might, peradventure, be of another opinion.
There are some benevolent critics whose life is spent in watching the characters and conduct of all around them. They note every word and tone and gesture; they have a formed, and not a favorable, judgment of all we do and all we leave undone. It does not much matter which: if we did so, we ought not to have done it; if we did not, we ought to have done so. Such critics have, no doubt, an end and place in creation. Socrates told the Athenians that he was their "gadfly." There is room, perhaps, for one gadfly in a city; but in a household, wholesome companions they may be, but not altogether pleasant. These may be called critics of moral superiority. Again, there are Biblical critics, who spend their lives over a text in Scripture, all equally confident, and no two agreed. An old English author irreverently compares them to a cluster of monkeys, who, having found a glowworm, "heaped sticks upon it, and blowed themselves out of breath to set it alight." We commend this incident in scientific history towhomsoever may have inherited Landseer's pallet and brush, under the title of "Doctors in Divinity," for the Royal Academy in next May.
This reminds us of the historical critics who have erected the treatment of the most uncertain of all matters into the certainty of science, by the simple introduction of one additional compound, their own personal infallibility. The universal Church assembled in Council under the guidance of its Head does not, cannot and what is worse, will not, know its own history, or the true interpretation of its own records and acts. But, by a benign though tardy provision, the science of history has arisen, like the art of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, to recall the Church from its deviations to the recognition of its own true misdeeds. Such higher intelligences may be called and revered as the Pontiffs of the Realm of Criticism.
We are warned, however, not to profane this awful Hierarchy of superior persons by further analysis. We will, therefore, end with three canons, not so much of criticism as of moral common sense. A critic knows more than the author he criticises, or just as much, or at least somewhat less.
As to the first class: Nothing we have said here islèse majestéto the true senate of learned, patient, deliberate, grave, and kindly critics. They are our intellectual physicians, who heal the infirmities of us common men. We submit gladly to their treatment, and learn much by the frequent operations we have to undergo. If the surgeon be rough and his knife sharp, yet he knows better than we, and the smart will make us wiser and more wary, perhaps more real for the time to come. There is, indeed, a constant danger of literary unreality. A great author is reported to have said: "When I want to understand a subject, I write a book about it." Unfortunately, great authors are few, and many books are written by those who do not understand the subject either before or after the fact. The facility of printing has deluged the world with unreal, because shallow, books. Such medical and surgical critics are, therefore, benefactors of the human race.
As to the second class, of those who know just as much as the author they criticise, it would be better for the world that they were fewer or less prompt to judge. The assumption of the critic is that he knows more than his author; and the belief in which we waste our time over their criticisms is that they have something to add to the book. It is dreary work to find, after all, that we have been reading only the book itself in fragments and in another type.
But, lastly, there is a class of critics always ready for anything, the swashbucklers of the Press, who will write at any moment on any subject in newspaper, magazine, or review. Wake them out of their first sleep, and give them something to answer, or to ridicule, or to condemn. It is all one to them. The book itself gives the terminology, and the references, and the quotations, which may be re-quoted with a change of words. We remember two criticisms of the same work in the same week: one laudatory, especially of the facility and accuracy of its classical translations; the other damnatory for its cumbrous and unscholarlike versions. The critic of the black cap was asked by a classical friend whether he had read the book. He said, "No, I smeltit." This unworshipful company of critics is formidable for their numbers, their vocabulary, and their anonymous existence. Their dwelling is not known; but we imagine that it may be not far from Lord Bacon's House of Wisdom, the inmates of which, when they "come forth, lift their hand in the attitude of benediction with the look of those that pity men."
Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop, inMerry England.
The exiles of Erin wandering far from their native land, are always sure to make their presence felt. Their power is well known in the United States; and it is, therefore, gratifying to note the progress which the Irish race is making amongst the people of South America, and especially in the Argentine Republic. To our countrymen is mainly due the development of the sheep-farming industry, which is carried on to a greater extent than in this country or Australia. Many of them number their acres by thousands and their flocks by hundreds of thousands. And the pleasure which the knowledge of this prosperity gives us is exceedingly increased by the many evidences in which we observe that National spirit and feeling is strong, active and energetic amongst them. In their educational institutions, and notably in Holy Cross College at Buenos Ayres, the study of Irish history is made a special and prominent subject of attention. In the capital, too, an Irish Orphanage has been established, where, under the kindly care of Father Fitzgerald, the children of the dead Irish exiles are lovingly tended and preserved from contaminating influences. In the breasts of the Irishmen of the River Platte there is love for the Old Land as warm and generous as can be found in the green and fertile plains of Meath or Tipperary. There are young men born in this country of Irish parents who are deeply read in Irish history, and who follow with loving anxiety the progress Ireland is making on the road to liberty. There are nearly a quarter of a million of Irishmen in the Argentine Republic, and they may always be relied on to aid their kindred in the Old Land. The chain of Irish loyalty to Ireland is complete around the world.
The Parisians, with that fine appreciation of the fitness of things for which they have always been famous, have changed the adjectivechic, by which they used to describe the attributes of the "dude" (male or female), for the more expressive onebécarre. As the latter word is usually interpreted "natural," it would seem that our French cousins, in their estimate of the "dude" species, agree with the Irish, who, disliking to apply the epithet "fool" to any one, invariably designate a silly person as a "natural."
To Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops and other Ordinaries of places having Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See,
To Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops and other Ordinaries of places having Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See,
POPE LEO XIII.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
What we have twice already by Apostolic authority decreed, that an extraordinary year of jubilee should be observed in the whole Christian world, opening for general welfare those heavenly treasures which it is in our power to dispense, we are pleased to decree likewise, with God's blessing, for the coming year. The usefulness of this action you, Venerable Brethren, cannot fail to understand, well aware as you are of the moral condition of our times: but there is a special reason rendering this design more seasonable perhaps than on other occasions. For having in a previous encyclical taught how much it is to the interest of States that they should conform more closely to Christian truth and a Christian character, it can readily be understood how suitable to this very purpose of ours it is to use what means we can to urge men to, or recall them to, the practice of Christian virtues. For the State is what the morals of the people make it: and as the goodness of a ship or a building depends on the goodness of its parts and their proper union, each in its own place, similarly the course of government cannot be rightful or free from obstacles unless the citizens lead righteous lives. Civil discipline and all those things in which public action consists, originate and perish through individuals: they impress on these things the stamp of their opinions and their morals. In order, therefore, that minds may be thoroughly imbued with those precepts of ours, and, above all, that the daily life of the individual be ruled accordingly, efforts must be made to the end that each one shall apply himself tothe attainment of Christian wisdom, and also of Christian action not less publicly than privately.
And in this matter efforts must be increased in proportion to the greater number of dangers that threaten on every side. For the great virtues of our fathers have declined in no small part: passions that have of themselves very great force have through license striven to still greater: unsound opinions entirely unrestrained or insufficiently restrained are becoming daily more widespread: among those who hold correct sentiments there are many, who, deterred by an unreasonable shame, do not dare to profess freely what they believe, and much less to carry it out: most wretched examples have exercised an influence on popular morals here and there: sinful societies, which we ourselves have already designated, that are most proficient in criminal artifices, strive to impose on the people and to withdraw and alienate as many as possible from God, from sacred duties, from Christian faith.
Under the pressure of so many evils, whose very length of duration makes them greater, we must not omit anything that affords any hope of relief. With this design and this hope, we are about to proclaim a sacred Jubilee, admonishing and exhorting all who have their salvation at heart to collect themselves for a little while and turn to better things their thoughts that now are sunken in the earth. And this will be salutary not only to private persons but to the whole commonwealth, for the reason that as much as any person singly advances in perfection of mind, so much of an increase of virtue will be given to public life and morals.
But the desired result depends, as you see, Venerable Brethren, in great measure on your work and diligence, since the people must be suitably and carefully prepared in order that they may receive the fruits intended. It will pertain, therefore, to your charity and wisdom to give to priests selected for the purpose the charge of instructing the people by pious discourses suited to common capacity, and especially of exhorting to penance, which is, according to St. Augustine, "The daily punishment of the good and humble of the faithful in which we strike our breasts, saying: forgive us our trespasses." (Epist. 108.) Not without reason we mention, in the first place, penance and what is a part of it, the voluntary chastisement of the body. For you know the custom of the world: it is the choice of many to lead a life of effeminacy, to do nothing demanding fortitude and true courage. They fall into much other wretchedness, and often fashion reasons why they should not obey the salutary laws of the Church, thinking that a greater burden has been imposed on them than can be borne, when they are commanded to abstain from a certain kind of food, or to observe a fast on a few days of the year. Enervated by such mode of life, it is not to be wondered at that they by degrees give themselves up entirely to passions that call for greater indulgence still. It is proper, therefore, to recall to temperance those who have fallen into or are inclined to effeminacy; and for this reason those who are to address the people must carefully and minutely teach them what is a command not only of the law of the gospel but of natural reason as well, that every one ought to exercise self-control and hold his passions in subjection; that sins are notexpiated except by penance. And that this virtue may be of enduring character, it will not be an unsuitable provision to place it as it were in the trust and keeping of an institution having a permanent character. You readily understand, Venerable Brethren, to what we refer; namely, to your perseverance—each in his own diocese—in protecting and extending the Third, orsecular, Order of St. Francis. Surely, to preserve and foster the spirit of penance among Christians, there will be great aid in the examples and favor of the Patriarch Francis of Assisi, who to the greatest innocence of life joined a studious chastisement of himself so that he seemed to bear the image of Jesus Christ crucified not less in his life and customs than in the signs that were divinely impressed upon him. The laws of that order, which have been by us suitably tempered, are very easily observed; their importance to Christian virtue is by no means slight.
Secondly, in so great private and public needs, since the whole hope of salvation lies in the favor and keeping of our Heavenly Father, we greatly wish the revival of a constant and confiding habit of prayer. In every great crisis of the Christian commonwealth, whenever it happened to the Church to be pressed by external or internal dangers, our ancestors raising suppliant eyes to Heaven have signally taught in what way and from whence were to be sought strong virtue and suitable aid. Minds were thoroughly imbued with those precepts of Jesus Christ, "Ask and it shall be given you;" (Matt. vii. 7.) "We ought always to pray and to fail not." (Luke xviii. 1.) Consonant with this is the voice of the Apostles, "pray without ceasing;" (1 Thessal. v. 17.) "I desire, therefore, first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men." (1 Tim. ii. 1.) On this point John Chrysostom has left us, with not less acuteness than truth, the following comparison: as to man, when he comes naked and needing everything in the world, nature has given hands by the aid of which to procure what is necessary for life, so in those things that are above nature, since of himself he can do nothing, God has bestowed on him the faculty of prayer by the wise use of which he may easily obtain all that is required for salvation. And in these matters let all of you determine, Venerable Brethren, how pleasing and satisfactory to us is the care you have, with our initiative, taken to promote the devotion of the Holy Rosary, especially in these recent years. Nor can we pass over in silence the general piety awakened in the people nearly everywhere in that matter: nevertheless the greatest care is to be taken that this devotion be made still more ardent and lasting. If we continue to urge this, as we have more than once done already, none of you will be surprised, understanding as you do of how much moment it is that the practice of the Rosary of Mary should flourish among Christians, and knowing well, as you do, that it is a very beautiful form and part of that very spirit of prayer of which we speak, and that it is suitable to the times, easily practiced, and of most abundant usefulness.
But since the first and chief fruit of a Jubilee, as we have above pointed out, ought to be amendment of life and an increase of virtue, we consider especially necessary the avoidance of that evil which we have not failed to designate in previous Encyclical letters. We meanthe internal and nearly domestic dissensions of some of our own, which dissolve, or certainly relax, the bond of charity, with an almost inexpressible harm. We have here mentioned this matter again to you, Venerable Brethren, guardians of ecclesiastical discipline and mutual charity, because we wish your watchfulness and authority continually applied to the abolition of this grave disadvantage. Admonishing, exhorting, reproving, work to the end that all be "solicitous to preserve unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," and that those may return to duty who are the cause of dissension, keeping in mind in every step of life that the only-begotten Son of God at the very approach of his supreme agonies sought nothing more ardently from his Father than that those should love one another who believed or were to believe in him, "that they all may be one as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." (John xvii. 21.)
Therefore trusting in the mercy of Almighty God and the authority of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, of that power of binding and loosing which the Lord has conferred on us though unworthy, we grant to each and every one of the faithful of both sexes a plenary indulgence according to the manner of a general Jubilee, on the condition and law that within the space of the next year, 1886, they shall do the things that are written further on.
All those residing in Rome, or visiting the city, shall go twice to the Lateran, Vatican and Liberian Basilicas, and shall therein for awhile pour out pious prayers for the prosperity and exaltation of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See, for the extirpation of heresies and the conversion of all the erring, for concord of Christian Princes, and the peace and unity of the whole people of the faith, according to our intention. They shall fast, using only fasting food (cibis esurialibus), two days outside of those not comprehended in the Lenten indult, and outside of other days consecrated by precept of the Church to a similar strict fast; besides they shall, having rightly confessed their sins, receive the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and shall according to their means, using the advice of the confessor, make an offering to some pious work pertaining to the propagation and increase of the Catholic Faith. Let it be free to every one to choose what pious work he may prefer; we think it well however to designate two specially, on which beneficence will be well bestowed, both, in many places, needing resources and aid, both fruitful to the State not less than the Church, namelyprivate schools for childrenandClerical Seminaries.
All others living anywhere outside of the city, shall gotwiceto three churches to be designated by you, Venerable Brethren, or your Vicars or Officials, or with your or their mandate by those exercising care of souls; if there are but two churches in the place,three times; if but one,six times, all within the above-mentioned time; they must perform also the other works mentioned. This indulgence we wish also applicable by way of suffrage to the souls that have departed from this life united to God by charity. We also grant power to you to reduce the number of these visits according to prudent judgment for chapters and congregations, whether secular or regular, sodalities, confraternities, universities, and any other bodies visiting in procession the churches mentioned.
We grant that those on sea, and travellers when they return to their residences, or to any other certain stopping-place, visitingsix timesthe principal church or a parochial church, and performing the other works above prescribed, may gain the same indulgence. To regulars, of both sexes, also those living perpetually in the cloister, and to all other persons, whether lay or ecclesiastic, who by imprisonment, infirmity, or any other just cause are prevented from doing the above works or some of them, we grant that a confessor may commute them into other works of piety, the power being also given of dispensing as to Communion in the case of children not yet admitted to first Communion. Moreover to each and every one of the faithful, whether laymen or ecclesiastics, secular and regular, of whatsoever order and institute, even those to be specially named, we grant the faculty of choosing any confessor, secular or regular, among those actually approved; which faculty may be used also by religious, novices and other women living within the cloister, provided the confessor be one approved for religious. We also give to confessors, on this occasion, and during the time of this Jubilee only, all those faculties which we bestowed in our letters ApostolicPontifices maximidated February 15, 1879, all those things excepted which are excepted in the same letters.
For the rest let all take care to obtain merit with the great Mother of God by special homage and devotion during this time. For we wish this sacred Jubilee to be under the patronage of the Holy Virgin of theRosary, and with her aid we trust that there shall be not a few whose souls shall obtain remission of sin and expiation, and be by faith, piety, justice, renewed not only to hope of eternal salvation, but also to presage of a more peaceful age.
Auspicious of these heavenly benefits, and in witness of our paternal benevolence, we affectionately in the Lord impart to you, and the clergy and people intrusted to your fidelity and vigilance, the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at Rome at St. Peter's the 22d day of December, 1885, of Our Pontificate the Eighth year.
LEO PP. XIII.
A Gallant Soldier Rewarded.—The friends of Colonel John G. Healy, of New Haven, Conn., especially the Irish National element with which the Colonel has been prominently identified for many years, will be gratified to learn of his appointment to a responsible position at Washington. The newly-elected Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, Colonel Samuel Donelson, of Tennessee, at the instance of his friend, Congressman Mitchell, of New Haven, has appointed Colonel Healy to the position of Superintendent of the Folding Room of the House of Representatives, a place of more responsibility and consequence than any in the House, except alone that of the Doorkeeper. It is very pleasant to see Tennessee thus extending the hand of fellowship to Connecticut, and we are certain that the citizens of Irish birth and extraction feel grateful to Colonel Donelson and to the popular and able Representative of the Second Congressional District of Connecticut for this recognition of a gentleman who has given the best years of his mature life to every patriotic movement for the land of his fathers.
Are the English so strong, so sure of their power, so thoroughly convinced of their superiority that they can afford to display so much disdain toward a great nation? Truly, the sun does not set on the possessions of the Empress of India, who counts millions of subjects in five parts of the world; but is this necessarily a sign of strength? The power of Charles V. encompassed the world, and we all know what became of his vast empire. But we foresee the objection to this comparison. It is that the power of Charles V. and Philip II. was mined by a secret and almost invisible enemy—an idea, a principle—liberty of conscience—and that Queen Victoria is not menaced by any such enemy. Indeed! But a small fact—the assassination of an Irishman of the most ignoble kind—affords ample food for reflection, and cannot fail to inspire grave doubts regarding the solidity of the British Empire. In spite of all the efforts of the English police, Carey, their unworthy protégé, was tracked, seized, and slain by a secret power. The Government of Queen Victoria, with all its resources, was not able to find a corner of the globe, however remote, where the life of the informer could be beyond the reach of the Irish counter-police.
The thing that renders this secret power so dreadful is that it exists wherever the Empress of India has subjects. In every English city, in every English colony, at the Cape, in Australia, in Canada as in India, in China as in America, in France as in Japan, wherever a British tourist travels, wherever an English missionary preaches, wherever an English merchant trades, the secret Irish enemy lurks ready to assassinate if he receives the order. The English may laugh at him or may become exasperated by him; but if England should become engaged in a foreign war could she consider without a shudder the incalculable dangers to which this enemy within might expose her—an enemy that will stop at nothing, that nothing can terrify, for he offers his life as a sacrifice, and that nothing can reconcile, for he is the personification of deadly hatred? For our part we know well that if France held within her borders millions, or even thousands, of men animated by such a spirit we would tremble for the future of our country.
But besides this irreconcilable Ireland that is everywhere, that sits in Parliament and there makes and unmakes majorities, and consequently cabinets, and that would betray the nation, if it saw fit, even in the centre of the national representation, it seems to us that the Australian colonies also are likely one day to take a notion to become independent; that the colonies in Southern Africa are rapidly becoming disaffected; that the inhabitants of India are demanding autonomy in a tone that would become very menacing if Russia should come nearer to Cabul—and she is plainly enough moving in that direction; and that Egypt is beginning to get restless and to show herself a little ungrateful,as if she cannot clearly understand the utterly disinterested intentions of Lord Dufferin. What would England do if upon two or three of these territories revolts should come simultaneously? The thing may be improbable, but not impossible. And what would England do if, taking advantage of these revolts, a great European power should declare war against her? What would she have done in 1857 if Russia had been in a position to give assistance to Nana Saïb? Such things have been seen in history.
To face such dangers—the danger of war, the danger of revolt, the danger of conspiracy—a large army composed of the most steadfast troops would be necessary. Where can England get that army? Her present forces are hardly sufficient in time of peace. She finds it impossible to retain the old soldiers in her service. A sufficient number of recruits cannot be obtained to fill up the gaps, and it appears to be impossible to stop the desertions that are constantly thinning the ranks. In vain the pay of the soldier is raised. The English workman refuses to enlist. It is, then, to the Irishman that recourse must be had. Trust that Irishman!
The British Government is unable to raise an army of more than three hundred thousand men, counting the Indian troops, whose fidelity is, perhaps, not beyond all suspicion; and three hundred thousand soldiers to defend an empire the most populous and the most widely scattered that has ever been seen on the face of the globe count for very little. Of course, there is the fleet, which is superb. But what could the fleet do against an enemy invading India by land? Of what use was it against the Boers or against Cetywayo? Of what use would it be against even a very inferior fleet that used torpedos as the Russians did on the Danube?
All these things considered, it seems to us that if the English would calmly consider their own situation they would become less arrogant in their international relations. We don't ask any more of them, for we have no desire to obtain from them any service whatsoever. We wish simply to be able to live with them and with their government on terms of courteous politeness.
Republique Française
M. Gounod, when lately at Reims, had been asked by the Archbishop to compose a Mass in honor of Joan of Arc. Some further details have since reached us as to the offer and acceptance of the happy suggestion. M. Gounod declared that he would compose within the year not a Mass, but a cantata on the life and martyrdom of the Maid of Orleans, the words to be drawn from Holy Scripture. He said, moreover, that his hope would be to return to Reims and to compose the music—the spirituality, tenderness, and animation of which all lovers of Gounod will seem to feel in advance—in the cathedral itself and close to the altar where the blessed and miraculous young creature knelt in tears to offer her victory to God.
In the early days of the Land League, the cry throughout Ireland was for compulsory sale of the landlords' interest to the State at twenty years' purchase of the valuation, the occupiers to become tenants of the government for a fixed number of years until their yearly payments had cleared off both the principal and interest of the sum advanced to the landlords. Famine had made its appearance in many parts of the country, and the peasantry would be glad to be rid of the incubus of landlordism at any cost. The landlords scoffed at the proposal, and it was well for the tenants that they did not accept it. Foreign competition was but then in its infancy, and the prices of agricultural produce were not going down by leaps and bounds as they have been in 1884 and 1885. The yearly instalments the tenantry would have to pay to the State could not be met out of the produce of the land at present prices, if twenty years' purchase of Griffith's valuation had been accepted by the landlords. At the present time the majority of tenants in Ireland (and perhaps in England), taking into consideration the depression in agriculture, and the probable higher taxation of land in the near future, would think fifteen years' purchase too much for the fee simple of the land. It is pretty certain that when the land question comes to be finally settled, very few Irish landlords' interests can realize more than fifteen years' purchase on the valuation. In 1880, they were, with few exceptions, blind to the changes going on at their very doors, and struck out for their old rack-rents by threats of eviction and law proceedings. Instead of meeting their tenantry half way, they set the crow-bar brigade to work, and the numbers evicted were so appalling, that Mr. Parnell's party prevailed on the late government to pass through the Commons the Compensation for Disturbance Act, the result of which would be to suspend all evictions until a Land Bill was passed. But the landlords got their friends in the House of Lords to throw out the bill, and kept on impressing on the late government the necessity for coercion. The effect of the action of the Lords was stupefying on the middle classes, who saw that the last chance of a peaceable settlement was gone, and the half-starved peasantry were stung to madness at the thought of the revival of the eviction scenes of 1847 and 1848. Then sprung up a crop of outrages which became systematic where they had been isolated, and the agrarian war was really upon us.
The landlords proceeded with their evictions, and the peasantry retaliated by outrage until the Liberal government, having failed to pass their ameliorative measure, was forced to have recourse to coercion. The first Coercion Act of the Liberals was passed before the Land Bill, and thus Ireland was whipped first and caudled afterwards. Mr. Forster "ran in" his twelve hundred Suspects, and the result was an increased crop of outrages, and that the Invincibles lay in wait twenty times to murder him. The Suspects were generally the more respectable of themiddle classes in the villages and towns—men whose interest it was to check outrage—who were marked down by the finger of landlordism as sympathizers with their brethren on the land. Then came the suppression of the Land League (1881), and the retaliating No-Rent Manifesto, which was not generally obeyed—chiefly through the influence of religion. There was suppressed anger and hatred of the ruling class throughout the land, and the people would not assist the police (who attacked their meetings and bludgeoned or stabbed them into submission) in tracking murderers or incendiaries. All this time the landlords kept on evicting, and calling through the English Press for still sterner repression of the right of public meeting, and the result was that secret societies multiplied and flourished. Religious influences could cope with a No-Rent Manifesto, but were almost powerless in grappling with secret societies. If the late Cardinal McCabe denounced them in the Cathedral, a large portion of the congregation rose up ostentatiously and withdrew. The voices of the national leaders who had restrained the people were gagged—Davitt in Portland, Parnell in Kilmainham. Things were going from bad to worse; the tension of public feelings was growing tighter day by day; the landlords were evicting apace and gloating over their victims, and saw not that such a state of siege could not last forever. And it appears Mr. Forster was so infatuated as to believe that it needed only a few months more of his stern rule to break the spirit of the Irish people. A glimmering of the true state of affairs had, however, begun to dawn upon his colleagues, and Mr. Forster succumbed at last to the incessant attacks of the remnant of the Nationalist members, who did not give him a chance of depriving them of their liberty by setting foot in Ireland, and to the vigorous criticism of thePall Mall Gazette.
The Suspects were released and there was joy throughout Ireland. People began to breath freely once more; for the reign of landlord terror and peasant outrage seemed to draw near its close. The Land Act of 1880 had begun to inspire the tenantry with hope, especially as the first decisions of the commissioners gave sweeping reductions off the rents hitherto paid. In May, 1882, things were looking brighter. It seemed as if the Liberals had repented them of coercion, and that conciliation was to be tried in Ireland. But the Invincibles, for whose creation Mr. Forster's regime seems to be especially responsible, were not to be placated so easily. The Phœnix Park butchery had already been planned, and it was carried out with fiendish determination. The civilized world was horror stricken. The cup of peace was dashed from the lips of Ireland, and a cry of rage and despair resounded throughout the country. It was heard from pulpit and platform, and echoed through the Press of every shade of opinion. Many good men thought that now England's opportunity for gaining the affections of the Irish people had come at last; that by trusting to the horror of the Irish race for so dastardly a crime, its perpetrators would be brought to the bar of justice, and the victims avenged. But it was not to be so. In England the general public seemed to believe that the Irish were a demon race, who deserved to be chastised with scorpions, and knowing what was the state of the public mind in Ireland after the Phœnix Park assassinations, it would be hardto blame Englishmen for thinking as they did in the face of such an appalling crime. The blood of Lord Fred. Cavendish called aloud for vengeance, and the government passed the Prevention of Crimes Act, the most severe of all the Coercion Statutes.
It was a mistake to treat Ireland as if she sympathized with the Phœnix Park butchery. Under the Crimes Act we had secret inquisitions, informer manufacture by means of enormous bribes, swearing away of the lives of innocent men by wretches, who were the scum of society, jury packing to a degree unknown since 1848, conviction by drunken juries, and even the starting of secret societies by ruffians who were in the pay of the Executive.
The people quickly lapsed into their old indifference as to aiding an executive which used such base means of governing. It mattered little that Earl Spencer's personal character was above suspicion. Under his rule the lives and liberties of honest men were taken away by juries packed with landlords, or their partisans, on the testimony of hired or terrified wretches, who were generally the most guilty of the gangs that were banded together for unlawful purposes during the land war. Earl Spencer ruled by means which must necessarily have involved innocent men in the punishment of the guilty, and his name is the best hated of all the bad viceroys that ever ruled Ireland.
J. H.
When the story was told to me, I thought it infinitely sad and pathetic. I wish I could tell it as I heard it, but having scant skill as a narrator, I fear I cannot. I can only set down the facts as they happened, and in my halting words they will read, I fear, but baldly and barely; and if in the reading will be found no trace at all of the tears which awoke in me for this little human tragedy, I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for my want of skill. Indeed, I would need to write of it with a pen steeped in tears. It is the story of a hard and futile repentance,—futile, in that amends could never be made to those who had been sinned against; but surely, surely not futile, inasmuch as no hour of human pain is ever wasted that is laid before our Lord, but rather is gathered by Him in His pitiful hands, to be given back one day as a harvest of joy.
"Whisht, achora, whisht! sure I know you never meant to hurt me or the child." The woman, childishly young and slight, who spoke was half sitting, half lying in a low rush-bottomed chair, in the poor kitchen of a small Irish farmhouse. Her small, pretty face was marked with premature lines of pain and care, and now it was paler than usual, for across eyebrow and cheek extended a livid, dark bruise, as if from a blow of a heavy fist, and over the pathetic, drooping mouth there was a cruel, jagged cut, this evidently caused by a fall against something with a sharp, projecting point. By her side, in a wattled cradle, lay a puny,small baby, about a year old, with its small blue fingers, claw-like in their leanness, clutched closely, and with such a gray shade over its pinched features that one might have thought it dying. The young husband and father was cast down in an attitude bespeaking utter abasement at his wife's knees, and his face was hidden in her lap; but over the nut-brown hair her thin hands went softly, with caressing tender strokings, and as the great heart-breaking sobs burst from him the tears rolled one after another down her wan little face, while her low, soft voice went on tenderly, "Whisht, alanna machree, whisht! sure it's breakin' my heart ye are! Sure, how can I bear at all, at all, to listen to ye sobbin' like that?"
All the weary months of unkindness and neglect were forgotten, and she only remembered that her Jim was in sore trouble—Jim Daly that courted her, her husband, and her baby's father; not Jim Daly the good fellow at the public-house, always ready to take a treat or stand one; always the first in every scheme of conviviality, drowning heart and mind and conscience in cheap and bad whisky; while at home, on the little hillside farm, crops were rotting, haggard lying empty, land untilled, and poverty and hunger threatening the little home, and day after day the meek, uncomplaining young wife was growing thinner and paler, and the lines deepening in her face where no lines should be. Three years had gone by since the wedding-day that seemed but the gate of a happy future for those two young things who loved each other truly, and almost since that wedding-day Jim Daly had been going steadily downhill. Not that he was vicious at all; he was only young and gay and good-natured, and so sought after for those things, and he had a fine baritone voice that could roll out "Colleen dhas cruitheen na mo" with rare power and tenderness, and when the rare spirits who held their merry-makings in the Widow Doolan's public-house nightly would come seeking to draw him thither with many flattering words, he was not strong enough to resist the temptation; and the young wife—they were the merest boy and girl—was too gentle in her clinging love to stay him. So things had gone steadily from bad to worse, and instead of only the nights, much of the days as well were spent in the gin-shop, and at last the time came when people began to shake their heads over bonny Jim Daly as a confirmed drunkard, and the handsome boyish face was getting a sodden look, and the once frank, clear eyes refused to look at one either frankly or clearly, but shuffled from under a friend's gaze uneasily and painfully. Last night, however, the climax had come when, reeling home after midnight, the tender little wife, with her baby on her breast, had opened the door for him, and had stood in the door-way with some word of pain on her lips, and he feeling his progress barred, but with no sense of what stood there, had struck out fiercely with his great fist, and stricken wife and child to the ground. And Winnie's mouth had come with cruel force against a projecting corner of the dresser, and his hand had marked darkly her soft face, and she and the little son were both bruised and injured by the fall. We have seen how bitter poor Jim's repentance was when he came to himself out of his drunken sleep, and in presence of it his wife, womanlike, forgot everything but that he needed her utmost love and tenderness.But if she was forbearing to him out of her great love, his little brown old mother, who had been sent for hastily to her farm two miles away, spared not at all to give him what she called the rough side of her tongue; and when the doctor came from his home across the blue mountains, and shook his head ominously over the baby, and dressing Winnie's wan face, said that the blow on the forehead by just missing the temple had escaped being a deathblow, the old woman's horror and indignation against her son were great. But the doctor had gone now, with a kindly word of cheer at parting to the poor sinner, and with an expressed hope of pulling the baby through by careful attention and nursing. These it was sure to have, because Jim Daly's mother was the best nurse in all fair Tipperary, and, despite the very rough side to her tongue on occasion, the gentlest and most kind-hearted.
These two were alone now, and the room was quite silent except for the man's occasional great sobs, and the low, sweet, comforting voice of the woman.
Presently the door opened again, this time to admit a priest, a hale, ruddy-faced man of fifty or so, spurred and gaitered as if for riding, who, coming to them quickly, with a keen look of concern and pain in his clear eyes, and drawing a chair closer, laid one large hand on Jim's bent head, while the other went out warmly to take Winnie's little, cold fingers. "My poor, poor children!" he said, and under that true, loving pity Winnie's tears began to flow anew. He was sorely troubled for these; he had baptized them, had admitted both to the Sacraments, had joined their hands in marriage, and he had tried vainly to stop this poor boy's easy descent to evil; and now it had ended so. In the new silence he was praying rapidly and softly, asking his Lord to make this a means of bringing back the strayed lamb to His fold. Then he spoke again:—
"Look up, Jim, my child; you needn't tell me anything about it, I know all. Look up, and tell me you are going to begin a new life; that you are going with me now to the altar of God, to kneel there and ask His forgiveness, and to promise Him that you will never again touch the poison that has so nearly made you the murderer of your wife and child. It is His great mercy that both are spared to you to-day, and the doctor tells me that he hopes to bring the baby through safely, so you must cheer up. And it will be a new life, will it not, my poor boy, from this day, with God's good help."
And so Jim lifted his head, and said brokenly:—
"God bless you, father, for the kindly word. Yis, I'm comin' back to my duty with His help, and I thank Him this day, and His blessed Mother, and blessed St. Patrick, that they held my hand. Oh, sure, father, to think of me layin' a hand on my purty colleen that I love better nor my life, and the little weany child that laughed up in my face with his two blue eyes, and crowed for me to lift him out of his cradle! But with the help of God, I'm going to make up to them for it wan day. But, father, I won't stay here where my family was always respectable and held up their heads, to have it thrown into my face every day that I had nigh murdered my wife and child. Sure I could never rise under such a shame as that. Give me your blessin',father, for me and Winnie has settled it. I'm goin' to Australia to begin a new life, and the mother's snug, and'll keep Winnie and the child till I send for them, or make money enough to come for them."
The priest looked at him gravely, and pondered a few minutes before his reply.
"Well, I don't know but you're right. God enlighten you to do what is for the best. It will be a complete breaking of the old evil ties and fascinations, at all events, and, as you say, the mother'll be glad to have Winnie and her grandson."
And a week later, wife and child being on the high road to convalescence, Jim Daly sailed for Australia.
This was in February, and outside the little golden-thatched farmhouse the birds were calling to one another, wildly, clearly, making believe, the little mad mummers—because spring was riotous in their blood—that each was not quite visible to the other under his canopy of interlaced boughs, bare against the sky, but that rather it was June, and the close, leafy bowers let through only a little blue sky, and a breath of happy wind, and a blent radiance of gold and green, and that so they must perforce signal to each other their whereabouts. Some in the thatch were nest-building, but these little merry drones were swaying to and fro on the bare boughs, delirious with the new delight that had come to them, for spring was here, and there was a subtle fragrance of her breath on the air; and all over the land, for the sound of her feet passing, there was a strange stirring of unborn things somewhere out of sight, and where she had trodden were springing suddenly rings and clusters of faint snowdrops, and tender, flame-colored crocuses, and double garden primroses, and the dear, red-brown velvet of the wall-flowers lovely against the dark leaves.
February again—but now far away from the mountain-side. In the city, where no sweet premonition of spring comes with those first days of her reign, and in the slums that crouch miserably about the stately cathedral of St. Patrick's, huddling squalidly around its feet, while the lovely tower of it soars far away into the blue heart of the sky. It is a blue sky—as blue as it can be over any spreading range of solemn hills, for poor Dublin has few tall factory chimneys to defile it with smoke—and there are little feathery wisps of white cloud on the blue, that lie quite calm and motionless, despite the fact a bright west wind is flying.
It is so warm that the window of one room in one of the most squalid tenement houses of the Coombe is a little open, and the wind steals in softly, and sways to and fro the clean, white curtains; for this room is poor, but not squalid and grimed as the others are. The two small beds are covered with spotlessly white quilts, and the wooden dresser behind the door is spotless, with its few household utensils shining in the leaping firelight; and opposite the window is a small altar, carefully and neatly tended, whereon are two pretty statuettes of the Sacred Heart and our Blessed Lady, and at the foot of these, no gaudy, artificial flowers, but a snowdrop or two and a yellow crocus, laid lovingly in a wineglass of water.
It is all very clean and pure, but, alas! it is a very sad room now,despite all that, because—oh, surely the very saddest thing in all the sad world! there is a little child dying there in its mother's arms. And the mother is poor little Winnie Daly, far from kindly Tipperary and the good priest, and the pleasant neighbors who would have been neighborly to her, and here, in the cruel city, she is watching her one little son die. He is lying on his small bed, with his eyes closed—a little, pretty, fair boy of seven—his breath coming very faintly, and the golden curls, dank with the death-dew, pushed restlessly off his forehead, and the two gentle little hands crossed meekly on each other on his breast. His mother, her face almost as deathly in its pallor and emaciation as his, is kneeling by the bed, her yellow hair wandering over the pillow, her head bent low beside his, and her eyes drinking thirstily every change that passes over the small face, where the gray shadows are growing grayer. They have lain so for a long time, with no movement disturbing the solemn silence, except once, when her hand goes out tenderly to gather into it the little, cold, damp one. But she is not alone in her agony. Two Sisters of Mercy, in their black serge robes, are kneeling each side of the bed, and their sad, clear eyes are very tender and watchful; they will be ready with help the moment it is needed, but now the great beads of the brown rosary at each one's girdle are dropping noiselessly through the white fingers, and their lips are moving in prayer. One is strangely beautiful, with a stately, imperial beauty; but it is etherealized, spiritualized to an unearthly degree, and the flowing serge robes throw out that noble face into fairer relief than could any empress's purple and gold brocade. Both women are wonderfully sweet-faced: these nuns are always so pitying and tender, because their daily and hourly contact with human pain and sin and misery must keep, I think, the warm human sympathies in them alive and throbbing always. Now there is a faint movement over the child's face and limbs, and the tall, beautiful nun rises quickly, because, well-skilled in death-bed lore, she sees that the end cannot be very far off. His eyes open slowly, and wander a little at first; then they come back to rest on his mother's face, and raising one small hand with difficulty he touches her thin cheek caressingly, and then his hand falls again, and he says weakly, "Mammy, lift me up."
"Yes, my lamb," poor Winnie answers brokenly, gathering him up in her arms and laying the little golden head on her breast. He closes his eyes again for a minute, then reopens them, and his gaze wanders around the room as if seeking something, and one of the nuns, understanding, goes gently and brings the few spring flowers to the bedside; this morning tender Sister Columba had carried them to him, knowing what a wonder and happiness flowers always were to the little crippled child,—for Jim's little lad was crippled from that fall in his babyhood. He lies contentedly a moment, and then says weakly, the words dropping with painful pauses between each,—
"Mammy, will there—be green fields in heaven—an' primroses—an' will I be able—to run then? I wouldn't go to Crumlin last summer—with the boys—'kase I was lame—but they got primroses—an' gev me some."
And it is the nun who answers, for the mother's agonized whitelips only stir dumbly: "Yes, Jimmy, darling little child, there will be green fields in heaven, and primroses, and you will run and sing; and our dear Lord will be there and His Blessed Mother, and He will smile to see you playing about His feet."
Then she lifts the great crucifix of her rosary, and lays it for a moment against the wan baby lips that smile gently at her, and the white eyelids fall over the pansy eyes, and gradually the soft sleep passes imperceptibly and painlessly into death. And one nun takes him out of his mother's arms, and lays him down softly on the pillows and smooths the little fair limbs, and passes a loving hand over the transparent eyelids; and the other nun gathers poor Winnie into her tender arms, with sweet comforting words that will surely help her by and by, but now are unheeded, because God has mercifully given her a short insensibility. And the nun turns to the other, with a little soft fluttering sigh stirring her wistful mouth, and says, "Poor darling! the separation will not be for long. Our dear Lord will very soon lay her baby once more in her arms."
A fortnight later a bronzed and bearded man landed on the quay of Dublin. It was Jim Daly—a new, grave, strong Jim Daly, coming home now comparatively a wealthy man, with the money earned by steady industry, in the gold-fields. There he had worked steadily for three years, with always the object coloring his life of atoning for the past, and making fair the future to wife and child and mother, and the object had been strong enough to keep him apart from the sin and riotousness and drunkenness of the camp. He would have been persuasive-tongued, indeed, among the wild livers who could have persuaded Jim Daly to join in a carousal. But the worst living among the diggers knew how to come to him for help and advice when they needed it; and many a gentle, kindly act was done by him in his quiet unobtrusive manner, with no consciousness in his own mind that he was doing more than any other man would have done.
He had never written home in all those years, though the thought of those beloved ones was always with him—at getting up and lying down, in his dreams and during the hours of the working day. At first times were hard with him, and for three years it was a dreary struggle for existence; and he could not bear to write while every day his feet were slipping backward. Then came the rush to the gold-fields, and he, coming on a lucky vein, found himself steadily making "a pile," and so determined that when a certain sum was amassed he would turn his steps homeward; and because postal arrangements in those days were so precarious, and the time occupied by the transit of a letter so long, he had then given up the thought of writing at all, watching eagerly the days drifting by that were bringing him each day nearer home. In his wandering life no letter had ever reached him; but he never doubted that they were all quite safe; in that little peaceful hillside village, and cluster of farmsteads, life passed so innocently and safely; the people were poor, but the landlord was lenient, and they managed to pay the rent he asked without the starvation and misery that existed on other estates; and apart from the pain and destitution and sin of the towns, the little colony seemed also to be exempt from their diseases,and the little graveyard was long in filling up; the funerals were seldom, unless when sometimes an old man or woman, come to a patriarchal age, went out gladly to lay their weary old bones under the long grasses and the green sorrel and the daisy stars.
This had all been in his day, and he did not know at all how things had changed. First, after he sailed, things had gone fairly; Winnie had grown strong again, and even when his silence grew obstinate, no shadow of doubt crossed her mind; she was so sure he loved her, and she knew he would come back some day to her. The first cloud on the sky came when the baby developed some disease of the hip, the result of the fall, and it refused to yield to all the doctor's treatment; indeed it became worse with time, and as the years slipped by, the ailing, puny babe grew into a delicate, gentle child, fair and wise and grave, but crippled hopelessly. Then, the fourth year after Jim went, there came a bad season, crops failed, and the cow died; and then, fast on those troubles, the kind old landlord died, and his place was taken by a schoolboy at Eton, and, alas! the agency of his estates placed in the hands of a certain J. P. and D. L., tales of whose evictions on the estates already under his charge had made those simple peasants shiver by their firesides in the winter evenings. Then to this peaceful mountain colony came raising of rents like a thunder-clap, followed soon by writs, and then the Sheriff and the dreadful evicting parties. And one of the first to go was old Mrs. Daly; and when she saw the little brown house whereto her young husband, dead those twenty years, had brought her as a bride, where her children were born, and from whose doors one after the other the little frail things, dead at birth, had been carried, till at last her strong, hearty Jim came—when she saw the golden thatch of it given to the flames, the honest, proud old heart broke, and from the house of a kindly neighbor, where neighbor's hands carried her gently, she also went out, a few days later, to join husband and babes in the churchyard house, whence none should seek to evict them. And the troubles thickened, and famine and fever and death came; and then the good priest died too—of a broken heart, they said. And so the last friend was gone—for the people, with pain and death shadowing every hearthstone, were overwhelmed with their own troubles—and poor Winnie and the little crippled son drifted away to the city.
And at the time all those things were happening, Jim Daly used to stand at the door of his tent in the evening, gazing gravely away westward, his soul's eyes fixed on a fairer vision than the camp, or the gorgeous sunset panorama that passed unheeded before the eyes of his body. He saw the long, green grasses in the pastures at home in Inniskeen. And he saw Winnie—his darling colleen—coming from the little house-door with her wooden pail under her arm for the milking, and she was laughing and singing, and her step was light; and by her side the little son, with his cheeks like apples in August, and his violet eyes dancing with pleasure, and the little feet trotting, hurrying, stumbling, and the fat baby hand clutching at the mother's apron, till, with a sudden, tender laugh she swung him in her strong young arms to a throne on her shoulder, wherefrom he shouted so merrily that Cusha, the great gentle white cow, turned about, and ceased for a moment herplacid chewing of the cud, to gaze in some alarm at the approaching despoilers of her milk.
Oh, how bitterly sad that dream seems to me, knowing the bitter reality! That in the squalid slums of the city, the girl-wife was setting her feet for death; that the little child, crippled by the father's drunken blow, had never played or run gladly as other children do—never would do these things unless it might be in the wide, green playing-fields of heaven.
I will tell you how he found his wife. It was evening when he landed at the North Wall, and he found then that till morning there was no train to take him home; and with what fierce impatience he thought of the hours of evening and night to be lived through before he could be on his way to his beloved ones, one can imagine. Then he remembered that by a fellow-digger, who parted with him in London, he had been intrusted with a wreath to lay on a certain grave in Glasnevin; and with a certain sense of relief at the prospect of something to be done, he unpacked the wreath from among his belongings on his arrival at the hotel, and, ordering a meal to be ready by his return, he set out for the cemetery.
It was almost dusk when he reached it, and not far from closing-time, and, the wreath deposited, he was making his way to the gate again. Suddenly his attention was caught by a sound of violent coughing, and turning in the direction from which it proceeded, he saw a woman's figure kneeling by a small, poor grave. For the dusk he could hardly see her face, which also was partly turned away from him; but he could see that her hands were pressed tightly on her breast, as if striving to repress the frightful paroxysms which were shaking her from head to foot.
Jim was tender and pitiful to women always, and now with a thought of Winnie—for the figure was slight and girlish-looking—he went over and laid his hand very gently on the woman's shoulder, saying, "Come, poor soul! God help ye; ye must come now, for it's nigh on closin'-time; and, sure, kneelin' on the wet earth in this raw, foggy evenin' is no place for ye, at all, at all."
The coughing had ceased, and as he spoke she looked up at him wildly. Then she gave a great cry that went straight through the man's heart; she sprang up, and, throwing her thin arms round his neck cried out: "Jim, Jim, me own Jim, come back to me again! Oh, thank God, thank God! Jim, Jim, don't you know your own Winnie?" for he was standing stupefied by the suddenness of it all. Then he gathered the poor, worn body into the happy harborage of his arms, and, for a minute, in the joy of the reunion, he did not even think of the strangeness of the place in which he had found her; and mercifully for those first moments the dusk hid from him how deathly was the face his kisses were falling on. Then, suddenly, with a dreadful thunderous shock, he remembered where they were standing, and I think even before he cried out to know whose was the grave, that in his heart he knew.
I cannot tell you how she broke it to him, or in my feeble words speak of this man's dreadful anguish; only I know that with the whitemists enfolding them, and the little child lying at their feet, she told him all.
"An', darlin', I'm goin' too," she said, "an' even for the sake of stayin' wid you I can't stay. I'm so tired-like, an' my heart's so empty for the child; an' you'll say 'God's will be done,' won't ye, achora? And when the hawthorn's out in May, bring some of it here; an', Jim darlin', I'll be lyin' here so happy—him an' me, an' his little curly head on my breast, an' his little arms claspin' my neck."
He said, "God's will be done," mechanically, but I think his heart was broken; no other words came from his lips except over and over again, "Wife and child! wife and child! My little crippled son! my little crippled son!"