'Facilis descensus Averni.'
I have, however, been severely punished. I reclined on the steps where your constable found me, and immediately I sank into a slumber which, had it lasted for ever, would have afforded me a blissful immortality. Sweet visions of the past, retrospections of youthful joys, untainted by the errors and cares of the present, monopolised my imagination. A mother's lips were pressed to mine. A father's smile gladdened my heart. I had clasped a sister's hand, and a brother's arm encircled my neck. The home of my childhood arose before me, and the garden, with which my earliest recollections were associated, appeared in luxuriant, vernal beauty. The strong hand of your officer, firmly but not rudely applied, dispelled the delightful scene in which I was entranced, and recalled me to the sad reality of captivity and degradation. Have I not already suffered enough to justify the clemency which I implore?" The wretched man was cautioned and discharged.
Having been brought before me on four successive mornings, I told him that I would not permit his coming so frequently, and that I adjudged him to pay a shilling, or to be confined for twenty-four hours. Thereupon he replied, "I regret, my dear Mr. Porter, that on this occasion you do not manifest your usual equanimity. I acknowledge my fault, but I am not worse to-day than I was yesterday or any of the previous days. Moreover, I must respectfully submit that you are greatly mistaken in your remarks as to my coming so often. I never came before you or any magistrate. I was always brought. If the police will leave me as they find me, I shall never complain of their want of attention, nor shall I ever intrude on your presence. Strike off that paltry shilling, and let me depart once more." I told the constable to remove the prisoner, upon which he exclaimed, "If you are obdurate, and insist on marking a penalty, put five shillings on the sheet. It will look more respectable, and there is just the same chance of its payment."
Fisher continued a hopeless, persistent drunkard. With natural talents of no mean order, and with educational acquirements from which great and varied advantages might be expected, he lived despised and ridiculed, and afforded to those under whose occasional observation he came, a melancholy but certain proof that when a man's habits render him his own enemy, he becomes incapable of deriving any benefit from the friendship of others. On a winter's night in, I believe, 1856, Fisher betook himself to a limekiln in Luke Street. He lay down too near the edge and fell asleep, never to awake again in this world. Suffocated by the fumes of the kiln, his corpse, after an inquest and verdict of "accidental death," was consigned to a pauper's coffin, and was ultimately made a subject for anatomical demonstration. His fate was truly melancholy, but some salutary reflections may be derived from contemplating the final consequences of habitual and unrestrained intemperance.
CHAPTER XV. A DUPER DUPED.
I shall now proceed to relate a magisterial reminiscence in which the only fictions are the names of the parties, and I trust that at the termination of the narrative, my readers will agree in the moral which I shall attempt to deduce, that the person who commences a cheating game is not to be pitied, if, at the close, he finds himself the only loser.
Twenty-five years have elapsed since, in an aristocratic family, in a central county of Ireland, a young woman was residing in a capacity rather difficult to define. She was somewhat above a menial and below a governess, neither the companion of her employers nor the associate of the servants. Her educational attainments were very limited, and her industrial power was of little value, for she was of small frame and delicate constitution. The care of two children was deputed to her, and all services necessary for their health, comfort, instruction, correction, or amusement were expected from Elizabeth Jones.
She had enough to do, but she did not think so. Her life was monotonous, her tastes were not congenial to the circumstances and persons amongst whom she was placed. A native of Wales, far from her kindred, and prevented by her position from forming, amongst her own sex, a friendship, or even an acquaintance to which she could attach any value, her only resource was to fall in love,—and a few casual attentions from an officer of constabulary quite overcame poor Elizabeth Jones.
"He dazzled her eyes, he bewilder'd her brain,