AT ‘TRINITY’
It was while the two young men were seated at breakfast that the post arrived, bringing a number of country newspapers, for which, in one shape or other, Joe Atlee wrote something. Indeed, he was an ‘own correspondent,’ dating from London, or Paris, or occasionally from Rome, with an easy freshness and a local colour that vouched for authenticity. These journals were of a very political tint, from emerald green to the deepest orange; and, indeed, between two of them—the Tipperary Pike and the Boyne Water, hailing from Carrickfergus—there was a controversy of such violence and intemperance of language, that it was a curiosity to see the two papers on the same table: the fact being capable of explanation, that they were both written by Joe Atlee—a secret, however, that he had not confided even to his friend Kearney.
‘Will that fellow that signs himself Terry O’Toole in the Pike stand this?’ cried Kearney, reading aloud from the Boyne Water:—
‘“We know the man who corresponds with you under the signature of Terry O’Toole, and it is but one of the aliases under which he has lived since he came out of the Richmond Bridewell, filcher, forger, and false witness. There is yet one thing he has never tried, which is to behave with a little courage. If he should, however, be able to persuade himself, by the aid of his accustomed stimulants, to accept the responsibility of what he has written, we bind ourselves to pay his expenses to any part of France or Belgium, where he will meet us, and we shall also bind ourselves to give him what his life little entitles him to, a Christian burial afterwards.
‘“No SURRENDER.”’
‘I am just reading the answer,’ said Joe. ‘It is very brief: here it is:—
“‘If ‘No Surrender’—who has been a newsvender in your establishment since you yourself rose from that employ to the editor’s chair—will call at this office any morning after distributing his eight copies of your daily issue, we promise to give him such a kicking as he has never experienced during his literary career. TERRY O’TOOLE.’”
‘And these are the amenities of journalism,’ cried Kearney.
‘For the matter of that, you might exclaim at the quack doctor of a fair, and ask, Is this the dignity of medicine?’ said Joe. ‘There’s a head and a tail to every walk in life: even the law has a Chief-Justice at one end and a Jack Ketch at the other.’
‘Well, I sincerely wish that those blackguards would first kick and then shoot each other.’