As true a grand master as ever was seen,
But although he was green and decidedly fat,
He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,
false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a
lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a
measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell
cat.
THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.
A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.
Down by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing
Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing--
For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:
Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath--
Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,
Curses in purest American; such
Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much
Room for the rest of the languages--there,
Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,
Naught but profanity ever in vogue,
Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.
Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether
God has ordained they should travel together,
But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,
Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.
Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,
Sunshine and harmony--natural growth.
While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,
Right down among us he stepped: all the while
Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,
And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,
Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.
Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins
Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;
Sang at our windows for all they were worth--
Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!
Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;
Nobody hunted the right or left bower;
Deserts put verdure on--one little flower
Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,
Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!
Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s _thurrum pogue_[L]
Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!
ARAB WAR SONG.
Allah, il Allah! the infidel’s doom
Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.
The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,
And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.
The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,
Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.
How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!
Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!
The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,
When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,
But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free
As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;
And their valor will scatter his merciless bands
As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,
Their fury will break on his terrified host
With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.
Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride
He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;
He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast
As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;
And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array
Is melting before our wild charges in spray;
Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,
And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!
Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,
Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;
Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,
Better freedom in death than existence in chains.
On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,
See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!
Strike swiftly, and spare not--yon turbanless crowd
Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.
If every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block
were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and
what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a
completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community.
Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith.
His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his
place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have
them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night
to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports.
He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his
gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful
jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby
through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay
at the parlor door by a ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to
take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue
of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen
variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him
as a signal to chaw him up--under such circumstances one don’t feel
inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.
Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of
life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of
the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You
never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some
horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to
envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had
with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered
hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power
sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in
a sling for a fortnight afterwards.
Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all
kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded
slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he
believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life
that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest
his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring
his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him
half an hour to sit down.
But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion
is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has
carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in
a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in
a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he
would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he
has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he
thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another
crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred
or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and
didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round
about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the
mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a
picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked
before--that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s
sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking
attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve
his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has
travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic
arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that
he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not
to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends.
With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going
over his half-dozen ordinary albums it is really magnificent to be able
to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his
remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he
can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs
of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.
NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.
I have never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.
I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.
There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge,
who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my
marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my
string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.
I thirsted for his blood.
I brought my father’s bulldog to take my part in a quarrel. It took my
part--in fact, it took several parts of me.
I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little brother. Bill piled
my little brother on top of me, and wanted more of the family to
complete the structure.
Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought a sixpenny hand-book of
boxing, and went in for a study of that literary masterpiece. It was
illustrated with striking diagrams. Figure 1,--the position. Figure
2,--one for his nob. Figure 3,--the body blow. Figure 4,--the return.
Figure 5,--the upper cut. Figure 6,--the cross-counter.
I devoured the instructions, and I practised the attitudes for weeks,
till I mastered both so completely that I was a walking encyclopedia of
P. R. theory, and I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or
whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely correct that I could
have been photographed to illustrate “Fistiana.”
But I held my secret, and bided my time, and submitted to Bill’s insults
with the glowing consciousness of approaching triumph, while I developed
my newly acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and administered
“one-two’s” in the ribs to the hair mattress, and “propped” the
bolsters, and sparred at my shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders
and hot ’uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt like a
conquering hero.
At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck; the supreme moment
had arrived for squelching Bill; and one day, when he had helped himself
to my lunch, and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accompany me
when school was over to a sequestered vale, where I might punch his
head.
He came.
I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told him to sing out the
proper figures for the various stages of the battle.
I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I threw my cap into the
improvised ring, tied a handkerchief for a belt round my waist, and
wanted to shake hands _a la_ Sullivan and Kilrain, but Bill declined.
Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck another
figure--which happened to be me.
“Figure 2,” shouted Joe, “one for his nob.” I made some mistake in this,
because it resulted in two or three for _my_ nob, and while I was trying
to get my head under my arms, out of the road, “Figure 3,” yelled Joe,
“the body blow!” but that infernal Bill didn’t fight according to the
regulations at all; for before I got Figure 3 into operation, something
came bang against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the ground
with the back of my head.
I wanted to consider the situation a little longer when they called
“Time,” but Joe whispered that Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had
to do was to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow with my
left, send the right into his potato trap, and settle him. Well, Bill
soon let out, and Joe screeched “Figure 4!” and I don’t know where I
sent my right, but my nose encountered both his fists one after the
other in a way that wasn’t in the book at all, and when Joe roared
“Figure 5, try 5!” I could only gasp--“He won’t let me,” before there
was an earthquake somewhere, and I was thrown three or four yards away,
and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth.
I was so disgusted that when they called “Time” again, I wouldn’t listen
to the voice of the tempters, and wanted to go to sleep on the green
sward, and when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more
diagrams, I could have poisoned him. I don’t believe in the manly art.
THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY.
[Among the many “learned” opponents of Home Rule in Ireland a few
years ago, was one somewhat famous professor of Trinity College,
who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowledge of
all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent wag of a
student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and
bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from
a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of
it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that
crucial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest
knocked him out in one short round.]
There once was a doctor of famed T. C. D.--
Dr. Blank we shall call him--a Crichton was he;
Not a science or language earth ever has known
But he’d mastered so well he could call them his own--
Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany--these
Were trifles he’d learned in his moments of ease;
Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law,
Theology, Medicine, Strategy--pshaw!
They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind
Which left intellects minor some eras behind.
’Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most
The Dons of the College--our doctor could boast
An intimate knowledge of every tongue
Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung.
In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek;
For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak;
A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore,
Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore;
He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese;
Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese;
In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk;
In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook;
Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat,
And none of the consonants stuck in his throat.
If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong,
The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong,
Not his be the blame--no, the odium must rest,
On the printer or reader who muddled that chest;
Had the text been entire he had read it with ease,
But he wasn’t prepared for an “out” in Chinese.
A WINDY DAY AT CABRA.
I would sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison for eighteen months under
the Coercion Act than spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so
dear to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend of mine hangs
up his hat permanently in that neighborhood. He uses a hat-stand for
that purpose, but there are occasional perfumes floating round there
that would accommodate a fireman’s helmet. My friend’s hearth and home
are in the vicinity of a plot of waste ground, the property of the
executors of a deceased alderman; and if the bones of the departed civic
dignitary were laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a
conspiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discovery, it could not
be carried out more vigorously and more enthusiastically. I once passed
a few hours with my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from his
drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies of the day. I had
barely taken my seat when a picturesque procession of farm carts, donkey
wagons, wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in sight. Then a
red rubbish rover deposited alongside of this offensive breastwork a
miscellaneous collection of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked,
a mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, potatoes in various
stages of disease and digestion, and a heterogeneous compound of varied
articles of food, which even a provincial editor would decline with
thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in the ravine between the
two mortifying mounds a specially assorted stock of disreputable rags
and broken bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier to
guard the pass. And then all round the rambling refuse-rangers commenced
to add fresh varieties to the dirty diversity, and new scents to the
odoriferous ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the
kaleidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival of every
contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, but when I started
homewards in the dusk I felt worse for myself. A gale had arisen of such
stupendous force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, for fear
of being blown inside out, and even then the wind whistled through the
irregularities in my teeth like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was
blown off, and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, a few
dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig’s head, and a jagged chimney
pot (which nearly cut my thumb off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a
garland of turnip-tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their
native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage reflections on the
situation, a sudden gust banged a dilapidated Champion into my mouth,
and I had to dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a multitude
of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne pepper, salt, mustard,
vinegar, and John Jameson’s finest distillation, taken in large doses at
irregular but frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate; and
such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that I failed to
count them all and was unable to distinguish one-third of the number. It
would take Faraday’s laboratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my
top-coat was like!
PEGGY O’SHEA.
AN IRISH SERENADE.
The pale moon is beaming,
The bright stars are gleaming.
Awake from thy dreaming,
Acushla, arise!
For sure the moon’s light, dear,
Though vivid an’ bright, dear,
Is but darkest night, dear,
Compared with your eyes.
Glimmerin’,
Shimmerin’,
Down in the river there,
Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,
See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,
Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
See, your own thrue love
Is waitin’ for you, love,
So waken anew, love,
An’ gladden my sight!
Don’t keep me quakin’ here,
Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,
Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,
All the long night;
Quiverin’,
Shiverin’,
Faith it’s Decimber, dear,
Freezes me, teases me--darlin’ don’t stay;
Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,
For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!
This morn had you been, love,
With me, you’d have seen, love,
A new dress of green, love,
I bought--for, you mind,
But last week you said, dear,
You hated the red, dear,
So get out of bed, dear,
An’ let down the blind!
Shyly,
Slyly,
Creep to the window now,
Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,
Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,
Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!
Why have you waited
So long, whin you stated
To me that you hated
The red of our foes?
While you are keepin’
Me here with your sleepin’
The color is creepin’
All over my nose!
Face it,
Chase it,
Meet it with bravery,
Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.
The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,
Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
Och, you are there now,
So purty and fair now,
I raley declare, now
I’m murthered outright;
My mouth seems like butter,
I hardly can mutter
A sintince, or utter
A word, love, to-night.
Thumpin’
An’ bumpin’
An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,
Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,
And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’
How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.
The summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,
Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;
The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,
Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.
Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain
Was one poor limping creature--the embodiment of pain.
His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,
Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;
His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,
And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;
Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,
For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.
I questioned him--this blighted one--I asked him what the reason
Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;
And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling
Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:--
“Don’t my uniform tell you that I
Am of the unfortunate band,
Whom you see day by day passing by,
Never pausing a moment to stand;
Who, in one perpetual round,
Forever are marching, until
It seems that while one of us stays overground
Fate ordains he shall never be still.
“‘Tis hard when the bright golden sun
Smiles out from a clear azure sky,
To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done
Till his glory has gone and passed by.
And e’en along green country lanes,
’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,
And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,
Who would care to be tramping all day?
“Then why do you wonder to hear
An unlucky sad mortal complain,
Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,
In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?
Or say, are you looking for smiles
From a fellow who feels on the rack,
After walking some twenty odd miles
On a path like a porcupine’s back?
“They say that the Muscovite knout,
On the back of a troublesome peasant,
When wielded by hands that are stout,
Is decidedly very unpleasant.
The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,
Caused aught but delightful sensations,
But what were their tortures of old,
Compared to our new innovations?
“No martyr that ever yet died
In those times that have long passed away,
Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,
Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.
My feet are denuded of skin,
My toes every one are disjointed,
For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,
And the most of our pavement is pointed!
“Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,
Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,
Save where an occasional flaw
Leaves a hole in to gather the rain--”
Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek
That emptied a neighboring tavern,
He had planted one foot on a peak,
While the other was lost in a cavern!
Then his language assumed such a tone--
And one not by any means sweeter--
And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan
That they couldn’t be put into metre.
So thus my sad narrative ends,
As I left the poor tortured one raving,
And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends
Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.
If they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall
have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s
mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist
Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the
census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and
on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her
mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who
is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage
in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another
ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan
retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last
column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical
expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she
filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute,
blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages
afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be
known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively
on that occasion.
Brown has got his form filled up all right. There was a preliminary
difficulty between himself and his better four-fifths as to which of
them had the greater claim to be entitled “Head of the Family.” As she
threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mandate, and her sitting
weight is two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, he consented to a
compromise by which she appears as “Head of the Family,” and his dignity
is maintained by the insertion of “Ditto, ditto,--occasionally.”