position of being the husband of a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is
fifteen, and duly entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on
figuring as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to let her
appear as of that matronly but not too far advanced period of
adolescence. She has had charge of the sheet since, and when it was not
called for on Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an hour or
so, and thought appearances justified her in knocking two years off her
record. On Tuesday, a lady friend congratulated her on her youthful
figure, and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She has been at
that column every day since, and by latest accounts was only two years
ahead of her eldest born. In another week she should be fit for spoon
and bottle-feeding.
The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Robinson. Robinson is
the family man of our street. He has been adding to the population of it
for a quarter of a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a
commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a lengthy journey
without the expectation of an introduction to another of his name and
lineage. He don’t know half his offspring. From the moment he turns the
corner into our street on his return from a month’s absence he is the
central figure of an imposing procession. A territorial army of young
Robinsons surround him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his
arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, follow four deep in
his wake, and make the welkin ring with filial expressions of welcome.
He has shirked the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities
until the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home to him.
The only occasions on which he has obtained a faint idea of his success
as a father have been those momentous periods when the baptismal
signboard of the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. “What shall we
call sonny?” has whispered the joint shareholder in his live-stock. “Oh,
John.” “But we’ve got John already.” “Oh, then, name him Peter or
Theodore--Theodore sounds well with Robinson.” “But we have had Peter
fifteen years, my dear, and it was only yesterday, you know, that we
feared Theodore had the measles.” Then Robinson would became irritated.
“Hang it,” he would exclaim, “do you think I am a Thom’s Directory, or
an army list, or a dictionary of scriptural names? What name are you
short of? Give him that.” Then Mrs. R. would begin the catalogue. “We
have John, and Peter, and Theodore, and Joe’s with his aunt, and Tom’s
at his grandmother’s, and there’s Philip, and James, and little Edmund,
and--” Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in his ears, and
knock over two or three of the middle-sized ones in the lobby, and be
followed by the screams of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some
of the eldest “sparking” in the lane; and when he entered some refuge
to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he would hear one tall stripling
whisper to another, “Here’s father,” and his end of the counter would be
left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he didn’t, as a rule.
But he couldn’t escape the census. He was at home. His feelings as a
father and his duty as head of the household demanded that that paper
should be filled up. Anna Maria couldn’t assist--there was another
Robinson _en route_. So he entered the parlor on Sunday night, and sent
the housemaid round to summon the clan. They came--in twos, in threes,
in fours, and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon the throng,
and as he traced his nose in this one, his mouth in that, and the cast
in his eye leered at him all round the room from other eyes, he felt
like Noah--only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of the
dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He commenced his enumeration,
and before any appreciable diminution had been made in the numbers
present by the retirement of those whose descriptive particulars had
been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, pegged out. The room
was still full. Two or three of the boys were playing leap-frog in one
corner, a few girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the
twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but two was struggling
with the coal scuttle, and some of them hadn’t come home from church
yet. Then Robinson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and
he laughed. “Ha! ha!” he yelled. “What’s the use of this bit o’ paper?
Send me a volume, four hundred pages, bound in morocco, forty names on
a page! I’ll fill ’em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, two
or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry out the returns. I’m
ready. There’s Robinsons enough round to make a census of their own. Oh,
let us be joyful!” Then he began to dance, sang “A father’s early love,”
and went up-stairs to swallow the latest arrival. It’s a pity Robinson
was at home this census time.
NEW ENGLAND’S MARKSMEN.
Rank on rank they march together,
Through the lanes and o’er the heather,
And the rhythmic ringing beat
Of their measured swinging feet
Music bears in martial tone
To the land they call their own.
Happy land that proudly boasts,
Not coerced, unwilling hosts,
But around her throne can feel
Hearts of oak and nerves of steel,
Hearts whose love no bribes retain,
Hands that never strike in vain.
Through the fields of yellow grain,
Through the woods of leafy green,
Here and there on many a plain,
Are their snowy targets seen;
And the mountains echo back
From their peaks the rifles’ crack.
Freedom knows how keen of eye,
Firm of nerve and quick of finger,
Are the marksmen brave who vie
In the skill they freely bring her.
Bunker Hill and Concord tell
They have won their laurels well.
And should war assail our shore,
Still to guard it ever ready
As their fathers were of yore.
Calm, yet eager, true and steady,
Are the loyal ranks that play
But at mimic strife to-day.
A MIXED ANTIQUARIAN.
They have high old times of it occasionally at the Royal Dublin Society
rooms. For example, at a recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C.
E., read an exciting essay on “The Manufacture of paper from molina
cœrulea.” Then there was some light literature from Mr. W. E. Burton, F.
R. A. S., who gave a paper on “A new form of micrometer for astronomical
instruments.” After these two courses came dessert in the shape of a
sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., about “Explorations in the
bone cave of Ballynamintra.” I wanted to read a dozen pages of
“Falconer’s Railway Guide,” but in the feverish state of excitement in
which the audience were boiling over it was felt that the experiment
might be dangerous. It might have led to revolution, and it wouldn’t be
logical--or geological--to use the Ballynamintra bones for ammunition.
I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious scientific
symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic arrangements of the gay
ichthyosaurus, and to see dragged forth from the dark recesses of
antiquity the private character (very shaky it was) of the lordly
mastodon.
I once lectured myself on “Relics of the Pre-Glacial Period discovered
during Excavations at Ballymacslughaun.” I got on very well for an hour
or so. The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the relics had been
kind enough to label them--“Tooth of an Irish Elk,” “Skull of a Land
Agent of the Pliocene Era (dinged by rocks),” “Feeding-bottle of the
Bone Age,” etc.
I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular iron arrangement
in a wooden handle covered with mud. I couldn’t for the life of me tell
what it was. There was no label on it. I was going to dub it the
“toe-nail of an Irish giant,” but the wooden handle forbade. Finally,
with a desperate plunge I went on: “The heroism of our sires has been
told in song and story for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned
not their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded by fiery
gallowglass and furious kerne. The Danish invaders felt at Clontarf the
whirlwind passion of the Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be
inspired by the sight of this--this--this ancient weapon--it is
evidently a spear-head--which in the nervous hands of some brave Celtic
warrior of old has probably pierced many a proud invader’s breast. This
spear-head, ladies and gentlemen--”
I was here interrupted by the appearance on the platform of a dirty
bricklayer who had been engaged in the early part of the day in some
repairs about the building. “Howld on,” he exclaimed, seizing the
pre-glacial relic; “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I want my throwel to
finish a job outside!”
JONES’S UMBRELLA.
There has been a lot of atmosphere round our neighborhood this past
week. Jones’s umbrella has been round the neighborhood, too. On the
whole it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the
atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less durable
character, according to their positions. Jones’s umbrella is the eighth
wonder of the world. Its size is majestic, its staying powers in the
heaviest hurricane are miraculous; its age is lost in the dim recesses
of primeval tradition; its performances are historic. It is believed to
have belonged to the original Jones, and to have been manufactured in
view of a second deluge, and were it not that the Joneses are such a
scattered family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar
continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other spheres,
principally tropical in their temperature), that umbrella could afford
shelter to the clan yet. It is massive in its strength. It’s a kind of
an iron-clad umbrella. I won’t undertake to say that it’s bullet-proof,
but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn’t disturb a seam in it.
It has only one defect. Given sufficient space--say Yellowstone Park,
and a child could open that umbrella; but there are occasions when
Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. Tuesday was one of those
occasions. Jones and Mrs. Jones and three of the grown-up Joneses left
their ancestral home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the
umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded by a slight shower
that threatened destruction to Mrs. Jones’s new bonnet, opened that
umbrella. Just at that moment, a miniature tempest careened up the
street. It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated
arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express excursion in the
direction of the eastern coast, at the rate of a mile a minute. Jones
held on to the umbrella, making heroic efforts to close it; Mrs. Jones
held on to him; the little Joneses clung to her; and the family
quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and bounds and flops
that flung the whole population of the city into a labyrinth of
confusion and dismay. Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and
a policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. Then the wind changed
and the umbrella suddenly turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth,
dabbed Mrs. Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promiscuously
about the side streets, and started back erratically for the west. It
was a thrilling time, but after Jones had been smashed through a few
shop windows, and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and
tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly figure caressed
by his coat-tails, and sat down once or twice quite unexpectedly in
Mrs. Jones’s lap, and lost his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let
the umbrella go. It hasn’t been seen since; but he don’t pine for it. He
hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In fact, if any fellow
restores it to him, I think he’ll have that man’s blood.
LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA.
The adorable Sara has been, she has seen, she has conquered. She has
nearly done for Guffin.
Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as much romance in his
nature as in that of Jay Gould. He prefers pigs to poetry, and knows
much more about sausages than he does about Shakespeare.
Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is æsthetic, she is
poetic, she is romantic--in fact, she has a Soul. So has her daughter,
and the pair of them go languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion
with their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more liver than
soul. That mansion is situate in a fashionable suburb, far from the
prosaic pork-curing establishment where Guffin makes his money--so far,
in fact, from business houses of any description that, as Guffin puts
it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha’porth of salt. Of course,
in this sacred locality all mention of Guffin’s trade is forbidden--Mrs.
Guffin’s soul couldn’t stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no
place on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the theatre
when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin blighted the future of an
ardent suitor, because he accidentally referred to the price of
pig-iron, in which his father was interested. So there is a polite
fiction kept up by the Guffins that Guffin, senior, is in a bank--a sort
of director, and for the sake of peace that matter-of-fact pig-sticker
has acquiesced in the social fraud. But he has declared he will do so no
longer. His blood is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future
porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the drawing-room,
and decorate the mediæval porch of his country home with strings of
sausages.
The ethereal Mlle. Bernhardt was the cause of it all. From the day her
appearance at the leading theatre was announced, Guffin has been a
martyr to the French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories.
They engaged a tutor who had advertised his proficiency, grammatically
and conversationally, in the language of the Gaul. For six weeks the
Saxon tongue was unheard in the house, save when some of its most
vigorous expletives would escape Guffin, or when Miss G. or Mrs. G.
would get stuck in their French. The maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress,
housemaid, and generally useful Molly became Marie. It was “Marie,
donnez moi la curling-tongs,” or “Marie, avez vous such a thing as a
hairpin about you?” the whole day long. Harry Snaffles, groom,
stable-boy, gardener, and general help, was Henri, and he was beginning
to get gray with such orders as--“Henri, mon garçon, harness le cheval
noir, nous avons made up our mind to take a drive apres quatre heures et
demi aujourd’hui.” And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head
in the straw, and wonder why he was born.
But it wasn’t till after they had seen the shadowy artiste in “La Dame
aux Camellias” that the explosion came. They returned home enraptured.
Guffin hadn’t been with them. He said he’d been getting enough of French
at home for nothing, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. But they told
him she was too utterly utter, and the gushing Miss G. showed him how
Marguerite interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Matron
Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of consumption. The latter
performance was a failure, however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is
ponderous, she is florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be
a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a face you could dwell
on actually as well as figuratively, and the most lively flea must find
it a weary journey from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a
half of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck that Guffin
can only fling his arms round once a week, taking a note each day of the
point where he leaves off. She has a chest and shoulders you could pitch
a tent on.
Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have to be repaired, and
when a woman like that goes in for acting the consumptive, the result is
disappointing.
But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one or other of them might
be encountered about the house gasping and sighing and murmuring very
much broken French, and practising faints and back-falls and
death-scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was spoiled; Miss G. was
leaning against the banisters of the stairs, one hand pressed against
her beating heart, the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes
turned upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to convey
unutterable anguish, but which really suggested she was learning to
squint; while Mrs. G. awaited her smaller half in the dining-room on the
only seat that could accommodate her--the sofa, and looked as
consumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight possibly could.
Guffin had just heard of a failure in the curing trade which touched
him, and he was in a morose humor. So when his daughter dragged herself
wearily to the table and helped herself with a groan to the potatoes,
and when his wife, heaving a monstrous sigh, cut herself a pound and a
half or so off the joint, and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or
less, he broke into rebellion.
“Look here,” he said, “what are you grunting and groaning about, like a
pig in a nightmare?”
“Pig!” shrieked his wife.
“Oh, mon Dieu!” sobbed his daughter.
“Yes, pig,” retaliated Guffin; “it’s a noble animal. You’d neither of
you have a shift to your backs if it wasn’t for pigs.”
“You are a brute!” cried Mrs. G. “I shall leave the house this instant.
Julia, order the carriage.”
Julia rang the bell with an expression of approaching insanity. The girl
responded with an alacrity suggestive of a key-hole performance.
“Marie,” said Julia, “Henri.”
“Well, if you’re hungry,” snarled Guffin, “sit down and eat. What’s
Molly got to do with it? Perhaps you don’t like the mutton. Will you
have a rasher?”
“Monster, unfeeling monster!” screamed mater-familias. “Let us haste,
Julia, to quit this abode of--of--this abode of--this maison du diable,
there!” she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the brutal
Guffin.
“You needn’t mind,” said Guffin. “I’m going out myself. Hope you’ll be
in your senses when I come back. Get me my hat.”
“Marie,” called Julia from the head of the stairs, “voulez vous bring up
la chapeau de mon pere.”
“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat.
And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your
French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam.
You’ve upset me so much with your d----d rubbishy parley-vooing and
moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with
a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if
you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know
what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll
put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front
door-step all day. D----n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next
Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll
begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let
folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every
house for two miles around.”
There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their
French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and
child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped
themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes
out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the
elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived
this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is
so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution
of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for
a shutter.
CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]
A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.
Oh! England’s the gem of the waters,
The pride of the foam-crested sea!
And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters
Are always contented and free!
Unknown are all want and starvation;
Her subjects are strangers to vice;
And the bulwarks of this model nation
Are Calcraft and Governor Price!
Wherever this proud nation’s standard
Unfurls its red folds to the light,
Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard
Of freedom, and progress, and right.
Barbarian tribes, by their teaching,
Her soldiers reclaim in a trice;
Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching
Of Calcraft and Governor Price!
From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon,
Wherever their footsteps have trod,
With the aid of the bayonet and cannon
They’ve planted the altar of God!
And the teachers of heretic notions
Have been silent and quiet as mice,
For fear they should pay their devotions
At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!
Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter
A word ’gainst the laws of the realm?
Or breathes there a serf who would mutter
A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”?
If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over
With a sound word or two of advice;
But if Irish, he soon will discover
The logic of Calcraft and Price!
Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven
You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne,
When, horror! you might have been given
A Republican birthright to own!
Thank God, that your blood is untainted,
You’re subjects of England--how nice!--
You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted
With Calcraft or Governor Price!
ENTITLED TO A RAISE.
SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.
This is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force,
To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse;
When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him,
And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim.
And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride,
Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side,
His blood was cool--(discipline’s rule)--he made no moan, so he
Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.
This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace,
But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place,
He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect,
And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect.
He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar,
He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar;
He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee,
So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?
And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know;
With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show;
Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt,
But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt.
He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff,
And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”;
He is silly, he is loyal,--he is all a Sub should be,
With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.
THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.
THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.
John Thompson was a postman who
Was bound in Cupid’s fetters,
And though not deeply read, ’tis true,
Was still a Man of Letters.
He paid attention to one Kate
Maria Julia Jervis,
But she did not appreciate
John Thompson’s Civil Service.
Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate,
Nor let my love-suit fail,
Oh tell me not my pleading’s late,
And don’t Despatch this Mail.”
But she replied, in accents grave,
“I love you not--decamp!”
And when he spoke again--she gave
Her foot an Extra Stamp.
And cried, “My anger you awake,
Your speech on insult borders,
I’m poor, but I would scorn to take
Your vile Post-office Orders.”
Then Thompson felt in mournful mood,
And moaned in accents shivery,
“Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude,
Pray pardon its Delivery.”
He left the room with footsteps slow,
A bitter lesson taught,
And then to counteract the blow,
A pillar-box he sought.
He felt how foolish was the tact
In courtship he had boasted,
And recognized the solemn fact
That he was badly Posted.
SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.
The cobbler’s always cheerful, though
His path of life be crost,
He does not tear his hair in woe,
Whene’er his all is lost.
He welts a lot, but not the wife
With whom his lot is cast;
She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife,
Still faithful to the last.
Onward his motto, aye, he strives
To grasp some other feat,
And in the dullest times contrives
Somehow to make ends meet.
The world may smite him without cause,
He never shuns its whacks,
And seldom grumbles at the laws
That regulate his tax.
We know but little of the good
His many acts reveal--
Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would
Their understandings heal.
And a much higher motive yet
His generous heart controls,
You would not see that saint forget
Their perishable souls.
A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.
The financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest
shanty of Jones, in our street.