one occasion, I had drawn out a brief, which was to be placed in the
hands of one of the most eminent counsel at the bar. He was struck with
the manner in which the task was executed, and was pleased to pronounce
it the clearest, the ablest, and best arranged brief that had ever been
placed in his hands. He inquired who had drawn it out; and my employer
introduced me to him. He spoke to me kindly and encouragingly, and
recommended me to _persevere_. The word rekindled every slumbering
energy of my soul. I had always endeavoured to do so, but now stronger
impulses seemed to stir within me, and there was a confidence in my
hopes that I had never felt before. He suggested that I should prepare
myself for the bar, and generously offered to assist me. Through his
interest, and the liberality of my master, I was admitted a student of
the Inner Temple. My perseverance was now more necessary than ever, and
again I thought of the little bird and its successful efforts. I had
gained another branch, and the topmost bough to which I aspired was now
visible.
I allowed myself but five hours out of the twenty-four for repose; the
rest I devoted to hard study, and to the duties of assistant reporter to
a daily newspaper. But often, in the midst of my studies, and even while
noting down the strife of words in Parliament, thoughts of Jessy
Mortimer came over me, and her image was pictured on my mind, like a
guardian angel revealing for a moment the brightness of its countenance.
My hopes became more sanguine, and I felt an assurance that the day
would come when I should call her mine.
I had many privations to encounter, and many difficulties to overcome,
but for none did I turn aside; my watch-word was "onward," and in due
time I was called to the bar. I expected to struggle for years with the
genteel misery of a briefless barrister, but the thought dismayed me
not.
Before, however, I proceed farther with my own career, I shall notice
that of Esau Taylor. There was no species of cunning, of treachery, or
of meanness, of which he was not capable. There was none to which he did
not resort. His brother clerks hated him; for, to his other properties,
he added that of a low tale-bearer. But he was plausible as Lucifer, and
with his smooth tongue, and fair professions, he succeeded in
ingratiating himself into the chief place in his master's confidence;
and eventually was placed by him at the head of his establishment; and,
in order further to reward what he considered his singular worth and
honesty, he permitted him to have a small share in the firm. But Esau
was not one of those whom a small share, or any portion short of the
whole, would satisfy. This he accomplished more easily and more speedily
than it is possible that even he, with all his guilty cunning, had
anticipated.
The merchant from whose employment he had supplanted me, and over whom
his plausibility and pretended honesty had gained such an ascendency,
had a daughter--an only child--who, about the time of Taylor's being
admitted into a sort of partnership, returned from a boarding-school in
Yorkshire. He immediately conceived that the easiest way to obtain both
the father's business and his wealth would be by first securing the
daughter's hand. Of anything even bordering upon affection his sordid
soul was incapable: but to obtain his object he could assume its
appearance, and he could employ the rhapsodies which at times pass for
its language. The maiden was young and inexperienced, and with just as
much of affectation as made her the more likely to be entangled in the
snares of a plausible hypocrite, who adapted his conversation to her
taste. The girl began to imagine that she loved him--perhaps she
did--but more possibly it was a morbid fancy which she mistook for
affection, and which he well knew how to encourage.
She became pensive, sighed, and drooped like a lily that is nipped by
the frost, and seemed ready to leave her father childless; and the
merchant, to save his daughter, consented to her union with Esau Taylor,
his managing clerk and nominal partner.
The old man lived but a few months after their union, bequeathing to
them his fortune and his business; and within a year and a-half his
daughter followed him to the grave; to which, it was said, she was
hurried through the cruelty and neglect of her husband.
Esau was now a rich man, a great man, and withal a bad man--one whose
heart was blacker than the darkness of the grave, where his injured, I
believe I may say his murdered, wife was buried.
We had not met each other for more than five years, and it is possible
that he had half forgotten me, or, if he remembered me, considered me
unworthy of a thought.
I have told you that I was called to the bar, and for ten months I
attended the courts in my gown and wig, sitting in the back benches, and
listening to the eloquence of my seniors, with a light pocket, and
frequently a heavy heart.
I was sitting one evening in my chambers, as they were called--though
they contained nothing but an old writing-desk, two chairs, and a few
law books; I was poring over a volume of olden statutes, mincing a
biscuit, and sipping a glass of cold water, when the bell rang, and on
opening the door, my old master, the solicitor, stood before me, and he
had what appeared to be a brief in his hand. My heart began to beat
audibly in my bosom.
"Well, Roderic," said he, entering, "I always promised that I would do
what I could for you, and now I am determined to bring you out. Here is
a case that may make your fortune. You will have scope for argument,
feeling, declamation. If you do not produce an impression in it, you are
not the person I take you for. Don't tremble, don't be too diffident;
but, as I say to you, throw your soul into it, and I will answer for it
making your fortune. Here are fifty guineas as a retaining fee, and it
is not unlikely that my fair client to-morrow may give you fifty more as
a refresher."
"Fifty guineas!" I involuntarily exclaimed, and my eyes glanced upon the
money. I felt as though my fortune were already made, and that I should
be rich for ever.
"Come, Roderic," said he, "don't think about the retainer, but think of
the case--think of getting another."
"What is the case?" I inquired.
"That," replied he, "your brief, which is as clearly and fully drawn up
as if you had done it yourself, will explain to you. In the meantime, I
may state, that your client, the defendant, is a young lady of matchless
beauty, great fortune and accomplishments. When you see her, you will be
inspired. She is the orphan daughter, and now the sole surviving child,
of an officer who had extensive dealings with a house in the city. Of
late years the prosecutor was his broker. Some time after the father's
death, the prosecutor made overtures of marriage to the defendant, which
she rejected. He has now, stimulated by revenge, set up a fictitious
claim for twenty thousand pounds, which he alleges her father owed to
the house of which he is now at the head; and for this claim he now
drags my client into court. Now, I trust that we shall not only be able
to prove that the debt is fictitious, but to establish that the
documents which he holds, bearing the colonel's signature, are
forgeries. It is a glorious case for you--here is your brief, and I
shall call on you again in the morning."
I took the brief from his hand, glanced my eyes upon the back of it, and
read the words--"_Taylor_ against _Mortimer_."
"Taylor against Mortimer!" I exclaimed, starting from my seat; "what
Taylor?--what Mortimer? Not Jessy--my Jessy? Not the villain, Esau?--the
supplanter----the----"
"Hold, hold," said the solicitor, in surprise; "such are, indeed, the
names of the parties; but, if you are in an ecstasy already, I must take
the brief to one who will read it soberly."
"No!" I cried, grasping the brief in my hand--"take back your fee--I
will plead this cause for love."
"Keep the money--keep the money," said he, dryly; "it will be of as much
service to you in the meantime as love. But let me know the cause of
this enthusiasm."
I unbosomed my soul to him. I did not see Miss Mortimer until the day of
trial, in the court; and, when I rose to plead for her, she started, the
word "Roderic!" escaped from her lips, and tears gushed into her bright
eyes. It was at the same moment that Esau Taylor saw and recognised
me--his eyes quailed beneath my gaze; his guilt gushed to his face. I
commenced my address to the jury--I drew the picture of a fiend. Taylor
trembled. Every individual in the court was already convinced of his
guilt. He endeavoured to escape amidst the crowd. I called upon the
officers to seize him. I gained the cause, and with it, also, won the
hand of Jessy Mortimer, to obtain which, from boy-hood I had persevered.
Taylor was committed to prison, to stand his trial for the forgeries;
but, before the day of trial came, he was buried within the prison
walls, with disgrace for his epitaph.
THE IRISH REAPER.
Some years ago, I was proceeding from Runcorn to Manchester, in one of
the passage-boats which ply upon the Duke of Bridgewater's canal. There
could not be less than a hundred passengers, and they were of as motley
a description as the imagination of man could conceive even in a dream.
The boats exactly resemble a long, low, flat-roofed wooden house; but
sufficiently lofty for a middle-sized person to stand erect between the
floor and the roof, or rather the deck. At one end sat about a dozen
Primitive Methodists, alternately reading passages of Scripture, or
bursting forth, at the extreme pitch of their voice, into a squall of
music, singing hymn upon hymn, till my very ears ached, and the timbers
of the boat might have started. Near them sat a number of young,
rosy-cheeked Welsh women, staring at the vocalists with a look of
wondering vacancy, that the goats on their own mountains could not have
surpassed. There were, also, manufacturers' wives and children returning
from a seven days' visit to Runcorn, for the benefit of a salt-water dip
in the Mersey; and six or eight prim, sober, sleek, silent, well-dressed
Quakers; with a more than sprinkling of the boys of the Emerald Isle.
The loud laugh of one of them was ever and anon heard above the shrill
music of the Ranters. He was about five feet seven inches high, and
exceedingly strong and well made. He wore an old greatcoat, of a
yellowish blanket colour, and a hat, the crown of which had fallen in
with service, and its brim was equally turned up before and behind, and
on both sides. His feet were thrust into a pair of brogues of true Irish
manufacture, which, with a pair of coarse blue worsted stockings and
corduroy inexpressibles, completed his outward man. He carried an
apparently empty sack under his arm, and was surrounded by about a dozen
of his countrymen, who seemed to regard him as an oracle, heartily
echoing back his boisterous laughter, and exclaiming, "Well done, Mister
M'Carthy!--faith, and it's you that's your mother's own son, at any
rate."
O'Connell had sailed from Liverpool on the previous day, and his
countrymen were discussing his political merits.
"Why, bad luck to ye," exclaimed our hero with the greatcoat, in answer
to one who had held forth in praise of the counsellor; "and it is you,
Mick Behan, that says every man in Ireland should pay the O'Connell
rint?--but I'll tell you a bit of a parable, as Father O'Shee says, and
a parable, too, of my own natural mother's making. 'Larry,' says she to
me--'Larry M'Carthy, don't be after planting those big potaties for
seed; for they've a hole in their heart a little Christian might slape
in?"
"You're no better thin a Sassenach, Larry," interrupted the aforesaid
Mick; "can't you spake your maneing like a man, if you have any maneing
at all, at all."
This was like to have ended in an Irish row in reality; though the
majority evidently sided with Mister Larry M'Carthy, not because they
agreed with him in opinion, but because, as afterwards appeared, he was
their master or employer. The disputants paused for a moment, and a loud
groan, as if from one in great bodily pain, mingled with the wailings of
a woman, was heard from the farther corner of the boat. Larry turned
round, to use his own expression, "like a flash of lightning," and the
next moment he stood by the side of the sufferer, who was a tall,
bony-looking figure; but, save the skin that covered them, there was
little of his mortal man but the bones left. It was only necessary to
look on his features, wasted as they were, to tell that he, too, was an
Irishman. A young wife sat beside him, whose countenance resembled
beauty personifying sorrow; she had a child at her breast, and two
others, the eldest not more than five years of age, stood by her knee
Larry looked upon the group, and his heart was touched.
"Och! and what may be ailing ye, countryman?" said he; "sure and ye
wouldn't be after dying among friends would ye?"
"Ohon! and is it a friend that would be asking after my own Patrick!"
replied the poor wife. "Sure, then, and he is ill, and we're all ill
togidder; and it is six blessed months since he earned the bridth of
tinpinny. Oh, blackness on the day that the rheumatiz came on him----"
"Shure now, and is that all?" interrupted Larry; "and, belike, the
doctors have been chating you; for I tell you, honey, and you, too,
Patrick, those 'natomy chaps know no more about the rheumatiz than holy
Solomon knew about stameboats. But, belike, I'm the lad that disn't know
neither; but maybe your chating yoursilf if ye think so. I'll tell ye
what it is: the rheumatiz is a wandering wind between the flesh and the
bone; and, more than that, there is no way to cure it but to squaze it
out at the ends of the fingers or toes."
"Oh, my childer's sorrow on it, thin!" replied the suffering man's wife;
"but, more and above the rheumatiz, Patrick got his leg broke last
Fibruary----"
"Ay, splintered, honey," added the husband; "and the doctors--bad luck
be wid them!--can't make nothing on't; and I am now goin to the great
Salford bone-doctor."
"And maybe he won't be curing the bit bone without the money?" said
Larry, with an expression of sympathy.
The sufferer shook his head, and was silent; his wife burst into tears.
"I will work, I will beg, I will die, for my Patrick," she exclaimed,
and pressed the child closer to her breast.
"You had better be barring the dying, honey," returned Larry; "and
wouldn't a raffle, think ye, among friends, be more gintale thin begging
among strangers?"
"Ohon! and is it _friends_ you say?" replied she.
"Yes, shure, and it is _friends_ that I say," answered Larry; "and a
raffle is what no gintleman need be ashamed on."
The boat at this moment stopped opposite an inn at the side of the
canal; Larry borrowed a quart measure from the skipper, and sprang
ashore. In a few minutes he returned with a quantity of rum, and,
handing it first to the wife, and then to her lame husband, said, "Come,
warm up thy ould bones with a drop of the cratur." He called the rest of
his countrymen around him, and handed the liquor to each. When gathered
together, there might be about sixteen or eighteen of them in all.
"Arrah, now, and these are all my men," said Mister Larry M'Carthy, with
a look of comical consequence, to his infirm countryman; "and where
would you be finding better? We are goin up to a bit of work in
Lancashire; for the Inglish are no better than born childer at _our_
work;[8] and," raising the liquor to his head, he added, "here's the
Holy Virgin be with us, countryman, and better luck to your bad leg;
and, should it ever be mended at all--though you mayn't be good for much
at _hood-work_ iny more, you have still a stout bone for a _barrow_--and
you won't be forgetting to ask for Larry M'Carthy. And, now, boys,"
continued he, turning to his workmen, "here is this poor man, and more
than this, I'm saying, our own lawful countryman, with the rheumatiz and
a broken leg, and his wife, too, as you see, and those three little
cherubims, all starving, to be sure, and he going to the doctor's
without a penny! Sure you won't disgrace Ould Ireland--just look at the
childer--and I say that a raffle is the gintale way of doing the thing."
[Footnote 8: Larry and his countrymen were all _navigators_, as they are
called, or rather excavators, employed in digging canals, railways,
docks, &c.]
So saying, he thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a small
canvas bag well filled with silver, and tied round the mouth with a
strong cord. He took off his indescribable brown hat; he threw in a
piece or two of silver, and went round, shaking it among his countrymen.
Each took out a bag similar to Larry's, and threw his mite into the hat.
He then, without counting them, emptied its contents into the lap of the
poor woman; and I should think, from their appearance, they must have
amounted to thirty or forty shillings. She burst into tears. The lame
man grasped his hand, and endeavoured to thank him.
"Don't be after spakeing," said Larry; "did you think we warn't
Christians?"
Such was the Irish raffle. Larry instantly resumed his jokes, his jests,
and his arguments; but I could do nothing during the rest of the passage
but think of the good Samaritan, and admire Mister Larry M'Carthy.
* * * * *
In the September of 1834, I was wandering by the side of a country
churchyard, situated near the banks of the Tyne. The sun had gone down,
and the twilight was falling grey upon the graves. I saw a poor-looking
man, whose garments fluttered in tatters with the evening breeze, and
who, by his appearance, seemed to be an Irish reaper, rise from among
the tombs. He repeatedly drew the sleeve of his coat across his eyes,
and I could hear him sobbing heavily, as though his heart would burst.
As we approached each other, I discovered that he was my old canal-boat
companion, the then merry and kind-hearted Larry M'Carthy; but no more
like the Larry I had then seen him than a funeral to a bridal.
His frame was wasted to a skeleton, and hunger and misery glistened in
his eyes together.
"Ha!" said I, accosting him, "is it possible that sorrow can have laid
its heavy hand upon the light heart of Larry M'Carthy?"
"Shure," said he, drying away the tears that ran down his wan and
wantworn cheeks, "and it is true, and too true, and heavy is the hand,
shure enough; but not so heavy as it should be, or it would be weighing
me into that grave." He pointed to the grave I had seen him leave, and
added, "But how do you know me, sir--and who tould ye my name?--as I
don't know yours--for, shure, and mine is Larry M'Carthy, as my father
and mother, and his rivirence, wid my natarel sponsors, to boot, all,
every one of thim, say and affirm."
I reminded him of the canal-boat and the raffle, and inquired the cause
of his distress, and his visit to the grave.
"Arrah, master," said he, "and you touch a sore place when you ask me to
tell it. Perhaps you don't know--for how should you--that, not long
after the time you spake of in the canal-boat, I came down to what ye
call the Borders here, to a bit o' navigating work that was to be a long
job. I lodged wid a widow--a dacent ould woman, that had a daughter they
called Mary--and, och! you may be thinking that ever Mary had an equal,
but it's wrong that ye are, if ye think so. Her eyes were like drops of
dew upon the shamrock; and, although she was not Irish but Scotch, it
was all one; for, ye know, the Scotch and Irish are one man's childer.
But, at any rate, she had a true Irish heart; and, but for the sae or
the Channel, as they call it, she would have been Irish as well as me.
The more I saw of Mary, I loved her the more--better than a bird loves
the green tree. She loved me, too; and we were married. The ould woman
died a few weeks before Mary presented me with two little Larrys. I
might have called them both Larry; for they were as like each other as
your two eyes, and both of them as like me, too, as any two stars in the
blessed firmament are like each other, where nobody can see a
difference.
"Mary made the best wife in Christendom; and, when our little cherubs
began to run about our knees, and to lisp and spake to us, a thousand
times have I clasped Mary to my breast, and blessed her as though my
heart would burst with joy. 'Sure,' I used to say, 'what would my own
mother have said, had her ould eyes been witness to the happiness of her
son, Larry M'Carthy?'
"But often the thought came staleing over me, that my happiness was too
like a drame to last long; and sure and it was a drame, and a short one,
too. A cruel, mortal fever came to the village, and who should it seize
upon but my little darlints. It was hard to see them dying together, and
my Mary wept her bright eyes blind over them. But bad luck was upon me.
The 'pothecary tould us as how our lovely childer would die; and on the
very day that he said so, the wife that was dearer to me than Ould
Ireland to Saint Patrick, lay down on the bed beside them--and och, sir!
before another sun looked in at our window, a dying mother lay between
her dead childer. I wished that I might die, too; and, within three
days, I followed my wife and my little ones together to the same grave.
It was this arm that lowered them into the cold earth--into the narrow
house--and, sure, it has been weak as a child's since. My strength is
buried in their grave. I have wrought but little since; for I cannot. I
have no home now; and I take a light job anywhere when it comes in my
way. Every year, at reaping time, I visit their grave, and bring with me
a bit of shamrock to place over it, and that it may be a mark where to
bury me, should I die here, as I hope I will."
Within ten days after this, I beheld the body of the once lively and
generous-hearted Larry M'Carthy consigned to the grave, by the side of
his wife and children.
GRACE CAMERON.
In the centre of a remote glen or strath, in the West Highlands of
Scotland, stands the old mansion-house of the family of Duntruskin. At
the time of the rebellion of 1745-6, this house was the residence of
Ewan Cameron, Esq., a gentleman of considerable landed property and
extensive influence in the country. Mr Cameron was, at the period of our
story, a widower, with an only child. This child was Grace Cameron, a
fine, blooming girl of nineteen, with a bosom filled with all the
romance and high-souled sentiment of her mountain birth and education.
In the commotions of the unhappy period above alluded to, Mr Cameron,
although warmly attached to the cause of the Pretender, took personally
no active part; but he assisted in its promotion by secret supplies of
money, proportioned in amount to his means. In the result of the
struggle--which, although he was not yet aware of it, had already
arrived at a consummation on Culloden Muir--neither he nor his daughter
had anything to fear for themselves; but this did not by any means
relieve them from all anxiety on the momentous occasion. The father had
to fear for many dear and intimate friends, and the daughter for the
fate of a lover, who were in the ranks of the rebel army. This lover was
Malcolm M'Gregor of Strontian--a warmhearted, high-spirited young man,
the son of a neighbouring tacksman, to whom Grace had been long
attached, and by whom she was most sincerely and tenderly loved in
return. M'Gregor at this period held a captain's commission in the
service of the Prince, and had distinguished himself by his bravery in
the various contests with the royal troops that had occurred during the
rebellion.
Having given this brief preliminary sketch, and advising the reader that
the precise period at which our tale opens is on the second day after
the battle of Culloden, and the locality a certain little parlour in
Duntruskin House, we proceed with our story. Seated in this little
parlour, on the day in question, Grace Cameron--occasionally employing
her needle, but more frequently pausing to muse on the absent, to
reflect on the past, or to anticipate the future--awaited, with intense
anxiety, some intelligence regarding the movements and fortunes of the
rebel army, with whose fate she deemed her own connected, since it was
shared by one who was dearer to her than all the earth besides.