Part 3

But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,--the crops, the weather, the price of provisions,--anything, in fact, or nothing at all. The language was of minor importance,--Irish, however, preferred,--and the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the cause.

Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.

The first day of the interception of _the_ Murphy’s letters, three bags full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.

The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.

The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s private sanctum with spare bags.

The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.

The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy letters on the stairs.

Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.

But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.

Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the general chaos.

The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.

Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the intercepted epistles in.

Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,--the order to overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was relieved.

Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed to the treacherous waves.

To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the gout.

AN OLD IRISH TUNE.

We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day, And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud. Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp, And misery reigned all supreme in the camp, When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June, There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.

It crept low and clear through the whispering pines, It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines, And over the dreams of the slumberers cast The magical spell of a voice from the past; It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain; And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon, Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.

Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile, Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle, Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet, For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet. Once again in old homes we were children at play, Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray. Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon, And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.

A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge, To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge, And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still, Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill; A dozen bright barrels could cover his head, But never a ball on its death-mission sped; Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!

It linked with its strains ere they melted away True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray, But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe, To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago. The air seemed to throb with invisible tears Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers, And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon, Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.

“HARVEY DUFF.”

There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. “God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence; “Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because he has been killed in the lump.

But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone, dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage, hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will amply repay the journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky enough to go to hospital.

Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.

How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.

I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”

There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular “Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff” for thirty seconds.

I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years, returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.

In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables, and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant, without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their mouths and their souls in their boots,--that is, if an Irish policeman has either a heart or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard both along with their civilian clothes.[A]

A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable, pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo. Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,” and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air, twirling and twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he could recover his breath.

I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines to that immaculate body:--

“HARVEY DUFF.”

My load of woes is hard to bear, I’m losing flesh with dark despair, And the top of my head is so awfully bare It isn’t worth while to dye my hair. Would you the cause be after knowing That makes me the baldest peeler going, That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff? ’Tis a horrible tune they call “Harvey Duff.”

Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!” If I’ve not heard you often enough, May a Land League convention dance jigs on my buff, And keep time to the music of “Harvey Duff!”

I was once with a bailiff serving writs, My skull was cracked to spoil my wits, For the bailiff escaped in the darkness dim, And the mob malafoostered me for him. But the case that circles my brain is thick, It cannot be damaged by stone or stick, And I’d rather submit to such treatment rough Than be safe to the chorus of “Harvey Duff!”

Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!” Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff, My bayonet into him with pleasure I’ll stuff Till he’ll wish he had never learnt “Harvey Duff.”

When duty has called me miles away, Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey, And there wasn’t a Christian of either sex Would give me a sandwich or pint of X. I couldn’t coax dry bread and water From father or son, from mother or daughter, But I always could reckon on more than enough Of that kind of refreshment called “Harvey Duff!”

Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!” Of you I get more than _quantum suff_, And would to the Lord I could collar the muff Who invented that blasphemous “Harvey Duff!”

I’m so destroyed I wouldn’t care To go alone to rebel Clare, And with a reckless spirit dare To take a farm that’s vacant there. I know the peasants bold would scatter My four bones to the wind--no matter; They’d wake me decent--no heart so tough As to mock a dead peeler with “Harvey Duff!”

Oh, “Harvey Duff!” oh, “Harvey Duff!” I wipe my eyes upon my cuff, As I think that my soul will depart in a huff To the requiem anthem of “Harvey Duff!”

A SEDITIOUS SLIDE.

We learn from a special despatch which has been cabled via Shanghai and Yokohama to Britain’s representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy has again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of sedition have been once more thrown open, and the pestilential torrents of a whole lot of things are deluging society. We feel that a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the slang of nearly thirty States are utterly inadequate to express our tumultuous thoughts on reading the following touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at present attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:--

There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the peace of mind and happiness of her Majesty’s defenders.

I was wending my cheerful way last evening toward my temporary lodgings in the bosom of that highly interesting family, the Higginses, who never did anything so low or ignoble as to _work_ for their country, and are, consequently, enjoying the reward of their virtue, in the shape of a big pension from a grateful government. I was whistling contentedly the refrain of England’s “Marseillaise,” “We don’t want to fight, but by jingo when we do!”

On turning the corner of Rutland Square, my legs evinced a sudden and unexpected interest in the atmospheric and astronomic condition of the heavens, for I found myself progressing homeward at the rate of twenty miles an hour on the back of my head, with one foot pointing triumphantly to Saturn, and the other indicating the whereabouts of the Milky Way.

Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was not the result of an earthquake, I wound myself up at the Rotunda railings, ejected a few front teeth and some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position.

I had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches wide and about forty feet in length. The mutinous, seditious, rebellious, and barbarous juvenile population of that ward must have been nearly a week improving that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of pitch couldn’t have stuck on it, and a coating of Dublin mud as adhesive as a dish of Boston baked beans, attached to my boot soles, afforded no protection to either person or property. The whole fiendish arrangement must have been organized with devilish ingenuity by either a Fenian engineer or a National League architect. Rage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare.

But it is strange how the misfortunes of others reconcile us to our own. In this instance, balm was poured upon the troubled waters of my soul and my head was metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw approaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lancers, and the fair Araminta Higgins.

They were mashing.

He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a re-dyed sash, preserved the best traditions of the British uniform by the ardor of his suit. He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering, and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.

“Araminta,” he murmured softly, “believe no base calumnies. I am as true to thee as--as--as thy father to his pension or the needle to the pole. I am thine--thine only. No power on earth can sever us.”

At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat at the lady’s feet and slinging his umbrella out into the roadway. A few minutes afterward a dejected and dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane observations of a remarkably ornamental and original description as he supported himself against a friendly lamp-post, while the dormant Irish blood in the fickle Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a coarse laugh.

They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think the enamored ensign spooned any more that night. Barely had they disappeared, when two prominent members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street from the direction of the house of a certain eminent judge. They were energetically discussing the National League campaign in Ulster. They neared the precipice--I mean the slide.

“This Parnellite invasion will fail--utterly fail--if we remain firm,” said the taller of the two, Col. K--H--. “Unity and perseverance must be our watchwords. United we stand--”

He did not finish the sentence, for they became divided, and his head rang out a hollow note of defiance to the breeze. However, despite his desire for unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to the soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to recuperate his exhausted energies.

The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink was a well-known attorney, who is at the present moment engaged in an abortive effort to discover an Irish constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N. looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six-and-eight pence in every wrinkle of his rugged countenance; his protruding coat-tails were veritable embodiments of _fieri-facias_; his stiff, angular collar had the disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the leather bag he carried in his hand was a positive arsenal of writs and decrees and processes. I felt horror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping briskly to destruction.

Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.

They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.

Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.

When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”

And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.

But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls and chasms to be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs, and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes? It’s awful!

IVAN PETROKOFFSKY.

Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division Of the Army of the Danube, is a private--nothing more; And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps. He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading, And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude; So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude. But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order, Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war; And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border, “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”

Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted-- His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place-- And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted, No heroic agitation was depicted on his face. It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him, When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day, When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him, And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway. There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village (So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are), When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage, “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”