“Jim, do you think that gentleman’s ‘order,’ what I had in the spit, is overdone yet?”
An Irish Scene.
A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek, an “Och, hone!” and “Ah, murther!” and “Hulla-boo—a—hulla-boo, poor Terry! Ah, why did I taze ye?” burst into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying hold on me with her hands, as she exclaimed,—
“Ah, docther, docther, come now, for the love o’ the moother that bore ye; come this blessed minute. I’ve killed poor Terry, an’ niver shall see him again. Ah, murther, murther! Why did I taze ye?”
“WHY DID I TAZE YE?”
Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran after her to a wretched tenement, some quarter of a mile off, and found the object of the girl’s solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable chamber, with a broken scissors in his hand, stirring busily the contents of a tea-cup.
It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far enough from her real intentions.
In his despair he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had procured from some injudicious druggist, which act had sent Biddy off after me in such terror. He was now mixing a powder which he had obtained from another druggist, who, knowing of his love affair, it will be seen acted with more wisdom than the first, as Terry let slip enough in his hearing to show what he wanted to do with the “ratsbane” for which he inquired; and Biddy, like a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow’s bid.
As soon as she approached, he, by some inopportune remark, re-excited her wrath, and she again declared she wouldn’t have him, “if he wint to the divil.”