Yours, as ever,
Harry McCarthy.
P. S.—I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,” which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send you tickets?
They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot say which was the greater surprise—that which he felt when he encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he got it back again.
OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.
BRIGHTLY our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,
Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;
Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;
Firm is each footstep, erect every head.
Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,
Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;
Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry
Wakens the nation—Our land shall be free!
We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining
In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,
And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,
For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!
What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;
Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;
On to the contest, then, up with the green again!
Death to the tyrant—Our land shall be free!
The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,
The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;
Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;
While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!
Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,
But now she rises erect from her knee,
And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,
Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!
England no longer can mock or deride us;
Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;
Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;
True to the cause we shall ever remain.
Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;
Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;
Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,
Soldiers, press onward—Our land shall be free!
PHILIPSON’S PARTY.
PETER PHILIPSON, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there, which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease—with a view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was regarded by Old Soapsuds,—which was the very irreverend title those benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest of the tenants.