Part 14

About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.

Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly perfected.

It was dark,--so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.

Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation, and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting, paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.

Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas, like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.

The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with pickaxes and shovels.

Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111 forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with the contents of a tinker’s budget--why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s all. They have one motto he appreciates:--

Whether on the scaffold high, Or in the battle’s van, The fittest place for man to die Is where he dies for man.

That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L. 1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:--

Here lies the body of Billy Green, 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!