“Well, no matter. I was to appear as Hamlet,—this is the dress of that character,—little suspecting, indeed, how the applause I was accustomed to receive was to be changed. To be brief. In the very centre of the dress-circle was the Governor himself, he came with his whole staff, but with out any previous intimation. No sooner had I made my entrance on the scene,—scarcely had I begun that magnificent soliloquy, 'Show me the thief that stole my fame,'—when his Excellency commenced hissing! Now, when the Governor-General hisses, all the staff hiss; then the President of the Council and all his colleagues hiss; then come the bishop and the inferior clergy, with the judges and the Attorney-General, and so on; then all the loyal population of the house joined in, with the exception of a few in the galleries that hated the British connection, and who cried out, 'Three cheers for Con Cregan and the independence of Canada!' In this way went on the first act; groans and yells and cat-calls overtopping all I tried to say, and screams for the manager to come out issuing from every part of the house. At last out he did come. This for a while made matters worse; so many directions were given, questions asked, and demands made that it was clearly impossible to hear any one voice; and there stood the manager, swinging his arms about like an insane telegraph, now running to the stage-box at one side, then crossing over to the other, to maintain a little private conversation by signs, till the sense of the house spoke out by accidentally catching a glimpse of me in the side-scenes.
“'Is it your pleasure, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen, that this actor should not appear again before you?'
“'Yes—yes. No—no—no,' were shouted from hundreds of voices.
“' What am I to understand?' said he, bowing, with his arms crossed submissively before him. 'I submit myself to your orders. If Mr. Cregan does not meet your approbation—'
“'Throw him into the dock!—break his neck!—set him adrift on a log down the Gulf-stream!—chip him up for bark!—burn him for charcoal!'—and twenty other like humane proposals burst forth together; and so, not waiting to see how far the manager's politeness would carry him, I fled from the theatre. Yes, Cullinane, I fled with shame and disgust from that fickle public, who applaud with ecstasy today that they may condemn with infamy to-morrow. Nor was I deceived by the vain egotism of supposing that I was the object of their ungenerous anger. Alas! my friend, the evil lay deeper,—it was my Irish name and family they sought to insult! The old grudge that they bear us at home, they carry over the seas with them. How plain it is: they never can forgive our superiority. It is this they seek revenge upon wherever they find us.”
I own that in giving this peculiar turn to my narrative I was led by perceiving that my listener had begun to show a most lamentable want of sympathy for myself and my sufferings; so I was driven to try what a little patriotism might do in arousing his feelings; and I was right. Some of Cullnane's connections had been Terrys,—or Blackfeet, or White-feet, or some one or other of these pleasant fraternities who study ball-practice, with a landlord for the bull's-eye. He at once caught up the spirit of my remarks, and even quoted some eloquent passages of Mr. O'Connell about the width of our shoulders and the calves of our legs, and other like personal advantages, incontestably showing as they do that we never were made to be subject to the Saxon. It was the law of the land, however, which had his heartiest abhorrence. This, like nine-tenths of his own class in Ireland, he regarded as a systematic means of oppression, invented by the rich to give them the tyrannical dominion over the poor. Nor is the belief to be wondered at, considering how cognizant the peasant often is of all the schemes and wiles by which a conviction is compassed; nay, the very adroitness of a legal defence in criminal cases,—the feints, the quips, the stratagems,—instead of suggesting admiration for those barriers by which the life and liberty of a subject are protected, only engendered a stronger conviction of the roguish character of that ordeal where craft and subtlety could do so much.
It was at the close of a very long diatribe over Irish law and lawyers that Cullinane, whose confidence increased each moment, said, with a sigh, “Ay! they wor n't so 'cute in ould times, when my poor grandfather was tried, as they are now, or may be he'd have had betther luck.”
“What happened to him?” said I.
“He was hanged, acushla!” said he, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as leisurely as might be, and then mumbling a scrap of a prayer below his breath.
“For what?” asked I, in some agitation; but he didn't hear me, being sunk in his own reflections, so that I was forced to repeat my question.