‘After a good voyage of some five weeks, we anchored in Cove, where I landed, and proceeded on foot to Tralee. It was night when I arrived. A few faint glimmering lights could be seen here and there from an upper window; but all the rest was in darkness. Instinctively I wandered on, till I came to the little street where my aunt had lived. I knew every stone in it. There was not a house I passed but I was familiar with all its history. There was Mark Cassidy’s provision store, as he proudly called a long dark room, the ceiling thickly studded with hams and bacon, coils of rope, candles, flakes of glue, and loaves of sugar; while a narrow pathway was eked out below between a sugar-hogshead, some sacks of flour and potatoes, hemp-seed, tar, and treacle, interspersed with scythe-blades, reaping-hooks, and sweeping-brushes—a great coffee-roaster adorning the wall, and forming a conspicuous object for the wonderment of the country-people, who never could satisfy themselves whether it was a new-fashioned clock or a weather-glass, or a little thrashing-machine or a money-box. Next door was Maurice Fitzgerald’s, the apothecary, a cosy little cell of eight feet by six, where there was just space left for a long-practised individual to grind with a pestle without putting his right elbow through a blue-glass bottle that figured in the front window, or his left into active intercourse with a regiment of tinctures that stood up, brown and muddy and fetid, on a shelf hard by. Then came Joe M’Evoy’s, “licensed for spirits and enthertainment,” where I had often stood as a boy to listen to the pleasant sounds of Larry Branaghan’s pipes, or to the agreeable ditties of “Adieu, ye shinin’ daisies, I loved you well and long,” as sung by him, with an accompaniment. Then there was Misther Moriarty’s, the attorney, a great man in the petty sessions, a bitter pill for all the country gentlemen; he was always raking up knotty cases of their decisions, and reporting them to the Limerick Vindicator under the cognomen of “Brutus” or “Coriolanus.” I could just see by the faint light that his house had been raised a storey higher, and little iron balconies, like railings, stuck to the drawing-room windows.
‘Next came my aunt’s. There it was: my foot was on the door where I stood as a child, my little heart wavering between fears of the unknown world without and hopes of doing something—Heaven knows what!—which would make me a name hereafter. And there I was now, after years of toil and peril of every kind, enough to have won me distinction, success enough to have made me rich, had either been but well directed; and yet I was poor and humble, as the very hour I quitted that home. I sat down on the steps, my heart heavy and sad, my limbs tired, and before many minutes fell fast asleep, and never awoke till the bright sun was shining gaily on one side of the little street, and already the preparations for the coming day were going on about me. I started up, afraid and ashamed of being seen, and turned into the little ale-house close by, to get my breakfast. Joe himself was not forthcoming; but a fat, pleasant-looking, yellow-haired fellow, his very image, only some dozen years younger, was there, bustling about among some pewter quarts and tin measures, arranging tobacco-pipes, and making up little pennyworths of tobacco.
‘“Is your name M’Evoy?” said I.
‘“The same, at your service,” said he, scarce raising his eyes from his occupation.
‘“Not Joe M’Evoy?”
‘“No, sir, Ned M’Evoy; the old man’s name was Joe.”
‘“He ‘s dead, then, I suppose?”
‘“Ay, sir; these eight years come Micklemass. Is it a pint or a naggin of sperits?”
‘“Neither; it’s some breakfast, a rasher and a few potatoes, I want most. I’ll take it here, or in the little room.”
‘“Faix, ye seem to know the ways of the place,” said he, smiling, as he saw me deliberately push open a small door, and enter a little parlour once reserved for favourite visitors.