A RUDE LOVER OF NATURE.
Father O'Shane, who had suffered severely from the effects of exposure
to the late violent storm, no sooner found himself a little recruited,
and the roads passable, than he prepared to return to his residence in
the city. He had, as conductor, a green young Irishman, lately arrived,
who felt almost inspired by the unusual luxury, presented for the first
time to his view, of a North American snowfall, and petitioned earnestly
to accompany his reverence back to the city to enjoy the "glorious
sport," as he called it, of a sleigh ride. The enthusiasm of the young
native of the perennial green fields of Munster did not escape the
notice of Father O'Shane, who himself was once not less enthusiastic,
and now not altogether insensible, to the chaste and almost sublime
beauty of Nature, when arrayed in her bridal robes of white on the
advent of spring.
"Well, Murty, how do you like this manner of travelling?"
"Be gonnies, your reverence, there is nothing I like better. What a fine
time it would be for tracking the hare, or hunting the fox!"
"You are fond of sport, I perceive."
"Bedad, sir, I would rather be out such a day as this, with dog and
gun, than eating bread and honey. I wonder if they would put you to jail
or transport you here, as they would at home, for fowling a bit in these
woods?"
"No, Murty, I believe not."
"No," said Murty, doubtingly. "You don't tell me so, your reverence?"
"I tell you that there are no game laws, or only very nominal ones; so
that, when you come back, if you and your dog traverse yonder mountain
from top to bottom, you need not be afraid of the rifle of the
gamekeeper, or of a sentence to a free passage to Van Diemen's Land."
"Murther! Must not they be very fine gentlemen here, to be so liberal?
Signs by I shall, please God, one of these days, visit that old, grand
mountain with the white head; and if there be a hare's form in his rough
sides or his curly beard, I will ferret it out, and soon have pussy by
the hind legs."
"I can see, Murty, you are growing poetical in your description of old
Mount Antoine," said the priest.
"Your reverence, did you ever see such a grand sight? I can't help
comparing that grand mountain there to the king of yon wild regions. The
snow on the trees, on the summit, causes them to look like gray locks;
and, looking down on the smaller mountains on every side, they appear
like his subjects or his sons, which, in time, are to grow big like
himself, affording shelter and refuge from the snares of the hunter to
the wild animals of nature. O, how I like America!" said he, his
enthusiasm still rising.
"That's right, Murty; I am glad you do like it. Wait till summer or
autumn, and then how beautiful these bleak hills will appear during
these delightful seasons!"
"O sir, it is a great, grand country! No tyrants, no landlords, no
poverty."
"No poverty, Murty, except what is purely accidental, or brought on by
the improvidence of individuals. In the very best regulated society
there must, of necessity, be poverty less or more," said the priest, by
way of qualification.
"Every thing is free, and there is liberty for all. The very fences, you
see, sir, unlike our stone walls at home, give liberty to the winds and
storms to blow through them. The mountains are free to the huntsman; the
very snow is free to blow and form itself into those beautiful banks,
and little mountains, and castles, and stacks, and curtains, and drapery
that we see on every side of us as we glide along."
The priest listened with astonishment.
"Was there ever seen any thing so _purty_," continued the peasant, "as
those ridges and mounds of snow? I have seen the grandest buildings in
Ireland,--Marlborough Street Church, in Dublin, the stone carving and
ceiling in Cashel of the Kings, the stucco work on the old Parliament
House in College Green,--but I think I see work in these fantastic snow
banks that beats them all hollow. And--glory be to God!--all this
beauty, so dazzling, so chaste, was created by a storm, when all nature
was in a rage, and men shut themselves up in houses from its violence! I
am glad now," said he, "our landlord turned us out. I now forgive him
for being the cause of our coming to this country of the brave and the
free."
"Was it a landlord who has been the occasion of so much enjoyment to
you, Murty?" said Father O'Shane, drawing him out.
"Yes, sir. It vexes me to think of it, much more to speak of it," said
the simple youth, with a tear full created in his eye. "We, and our
forefathers before us, had the farm of Lapardawn for more than three
hundred years. A new landlord coming in possession of the estate, we got
notice to quit, in the middle of winter. My father refused to yield the
hearth of his forefathers without a struggle, and locked himself and
family up. My mother was just after her confinement, and becoming short
of provisions and even of water, she begged of the police who kept guard
to hand her in a drink. They refused. She then begged, for God's sake,
to have a messenger go for the priest. For two days, the police refused
to let any body out of the house, unless we surrendered. My father, who
had cut a hole in the roof of the house to catch at rain water for my
dying mother, made his escape through it. A neighbor, who handed me a
drink of water through a broken pane in a window, had his hand cut off
by a stroke from the police sergeant's sabre. My poor mother died before
the priest arrived. My oldest brother, seeing his mother dead, and that
we had nothing now to guard, surrendered. We were all lodged in jail
that night, and all our means were sold at auction. It was lucky for us
we were put into jail; for, one week from that day, the landlord that
was the cause of all our misery and of my mother's death was shot dead
on the road from our farm to the town of Ennis. If we were out of jail,
we would all have been accused of the cruel landlord's murder, and
hanged; but we were, after one year in prison for the crime of defending
our homestead, liberated, and came out in a body to America. And now I
am glad of it, for two signs of tyranny I find wanting here--landlords
and game laws. The absence of one allows me to trace the steps of the
wild quadruped; and of the other, to trace my title to the soil which I
shall possess, down to the middle of the earth and up to the sky,
unfrowned on, or unawed by the landlord's tyranny or the 'peeler's'
cruelty. This is partly why I like to see these mountains of snow," said
he, "for I think that neither landlords nor 'peelers' could exist here.
They would become buried under these snow banks, for it is by night that
they are generally patrolling the highways, and plotting against the
peace of innocent families; and such a storm as the late one could not
but be fatal to the villains."
These and the like sentiments are those which generally pervade the
bosom of the Irish emigrant after landing on this enfranchised land.
Wonder not, then, you natives of this God-provided country, that the
foreigner is likely to become more republican than yourselves, and that
his is a keener sense of enjoyment than yours, from the evils of his
antecedent life. Do not, therefore, become jealous of his purer and more
ardent love for this republic, the inheritance of the oppressed; but,
instead of envying his growing influence in this country of his choice
and adoption, receive him with open arms, and make him a participator
with yourselves in the good things which you and your fathers have
enjoyed for ages, and your claims to which are grounded on no better
title than that of the emigrant; and which title is founded on the
adventitious discovery of this continent by a Catholic and a foreigner,
and on oppressions undergone by your fathers in their native lands.
Wonder not, then, that the Irish Catholic is the best lover of this
country, and that he feels himself at home here; for his sufferings in
the cause of liberty and of conscience have been such as to give him the
strongest title deed to the liberties and privileges, if not to the
enjoyments and comforts, of this favored land. Every prejudice is
unreasonable, but none more irrational than that which would throw
obstacles in the way of the gallant emigrant towards procuring a home
and a sanctuary in this land of refuge and freedom.
The land is wild and uncultivated, with its womb groaning under the
burden of plenty and fertility that have been dormant for ages upon
ages, and that must remain so for ages to come, unless the thrifty hand
of husbandry assist them into birth; and where are we to find, or when
will the "nativists" be able to procure, as busy hands and stalwart
arms, sufficiently numerous to bring into cultivation the millions of
acres within the extent of our country, if the emigrant and foreigner
are to be discouraged, and the mad clamor of the "nativists" is to
prevail? It was not all native blood that was spilled in the
establishment of the republic. It was not native genius alone that
created the constitution, laws, and institutions of our country. It was
not "natives," of course, that first discovered, settled, or established
the several states that form the grand Union. It was by emigrants, by
"furriners," that all these things were done. What, therefore, can be
more ungrateful, if not more unjust, in the "nativists," than to attempt
to rob the poor emigrant of the rewards of his labor and merit, in order
that they may enjoy all the fruit of the latter's toil? This is the
height of ingratitude and injustice; a far more glaring instance of both
than that of the _reputed_ forefathers of these "nativists" when they
robbed the old Britons of their homes and of those liberties which they
were _hired_ to defend. What models of honesty, justice, and truth you
are, most distinguished "nativists"! The foreigner built your house,
after having first procured the site or the lot; they furnish the house
with all useful, and necessary, and ornamental furniture; and these very
emigrants are yet necessary to keep the house in order; and you come and
threaten to turn them out, telling them you can now dispense with their
services, and that they are "furriners"! And, what is more inconsistent
and unjust still, by this policy of yours, if it could prevail, you
would be doing the most effectual thing to annihilate yourselves, both
physically, politically, morally, and socially. For, if you turned off
all the "furriners," not only would you sink in wealth and
resources,--your ships unmanned, your factories unworked, your canals
and railroads undug, and your battles unfought,--but your very blood
would corrupt, and turn into water! Your physical stature would soon be
reduced to the standard of the Aztecs; and, what is worse, following the
natural channel of your Anglo-Saxon instincts, you would become a
godless race of Liliputians! Yes, followers of Mormon Smith, Joe Miller,
Theodore Parker, and spiritual raps. O nativists, to what an abyss your
mental intoxication was hurrying you, in your blind zeal against the
emigrant and the foreigner!