“He laid the light burden, that scarcely weighed upon his arm, down on the pillows, very softly and gently, smoothing them mechanically with his hand. Then he stooped and pressed one kiss more on the pale lips: they never felt it, though the passion of that lengthened caress might almost have waked the dead. And so those two parted, to meet again upon earth never more.
“The next time woman’s lips touched Guy Livingstone’s, they were his mother’s, and he had been a corpse an hour.”
THE KISS IN HUMOROUS STORY AND ANECDOTE.
FATHER TOM AND THE POPE.
Every one who knows anything of the humorous literature of the century has laughed a hundred times over that wonderful story of “Father Tom and the Pope; or, A Night at the Vatican,” which has been attributed to so many of the leading Irish humorists, and is enough of itself to have made the reputation of the best of them. From its first appearance, in “Blackwood,” Catholics and Protestants alike have enjoyed its marvellous and abounding fun, and it is one of the few things written in our time which people do not refuse to read to-day because of having read them yesterday and the day before.
Those who know the story will remember that the reverend Father being “in Room, ov coorse the Pope axed him to take pot-look wid him,” and they proceeded together to “invistigate the composition of distilled liquors.” As sociability grew warm between them, Father Tom volunteered to astonish his Holiness with a new “preparation ov chymicals,” after the manner of the “ould counthry.” To make this “miraculous mixthir” exactly what it ought to be, his reverence insisted that “a faymale hand was ondispinsably necessary to produce the adaptation ov the particles,” and the butler of the Vatican had accordingly brought up “Miss Eliza,” one of the fairest maids of the household, that she might stir the milk in the skillet with the little finger of her right hand. Miss Eliza is described as “stepping like a three-year-old, and blushing like the brake of day,” and the Pope had very early to rebuke his reverence with some sternness for his “deludhering talk to the young woman.” Nothing daunted, however, the gallant Father managed somehow to upset the candle and put the “windy-curtains” in peril of fire, and while the rest of the company were engaged in “getting things put to rights,” the incident, or accident, occurred which can only be told in the words of the story.
“And now,” says Mickey Hefferman, the story-teller, “I have to tell you ov a raally onpleasant occurrence. If it was a Prodesan that was in it, I’d say that while the Pope’s back was turned, Father Tom made free wid the two lips ov Miss Eliza; but, upon my conscience, I believe it was a mere mistake that his Holiness fell into, on account ov his being an ould man and not having aither his eyesight or his hearing very parfect. At any rate it can’t be denied but that he had a sthrong imprission that sich was the case; for he wheeled about as quick as thought jist as his riv’rence was sitting down, and charged him wid the offince plain and plump. ‘Is it kissing my housekeeper before my face you are, you villain?’ says he. ‘Go down out o’ this,’ says he to Miss Eliza, ‘and do you be packing off wid you,’ he says to Father Tom, ‘for it’s not safe, so it isn’t, to have the likes ov you in a house where there’s timptation in your way.’