For the Cossacks now he'll have to stob,
Or shoot 'em holus bolus;
I'm shure 'twould be an easier job
At home to face the polis.
In a week or ten days after I had perpetrated this production, I was sitting in the upper court, when I was informed by the usher that Sergeant Barnes was most anxious to speak to me at my convenience and leisure. I directed that he should be admitted, and he proceeded to request that Mr. Baxter, one of the junior clerks, should be restrained from singing a song which he had picked up somewhere, and occasionally lilted to the other clerks when unemployed, as it was most disrespectful, and even termed him, Sergeant Barnes, "a tallow-faced old villain." I told the complainant that I should certainly prohibit Baxter from continuing his vocal pastime, as it was calculated to annoy an active and meritorious member of the police force. Barnes expressed his gratitude, and added, "I knew that your worship would never tolerate any of the clerks in abusing or ridiculing us. I readily acknowledge that I have received nearly £30 for detecting and taking deserters, but I would spend every farthing of the amount if I could only discover the author of Mr. Baxter's song, I'd punish him to the utmost severity of the law for writing such a rigmarole about me." In about ten minutes after the interview, the song was torn out of the interleaved statute by the hand that had inscribed it. The sergeant soon after retired from the force on a pension, and was, for several years, in a confidential situation at the premises from which the whisky was considered so desirable to "drink bad luck to all his sort" namely, Jameson's distillery.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A long thoroughfare in the Liberties of Dublin, supposed to have been originally called "The Come."
[7] A term used for English shillings, which previous to the change of currency, in 1825, passed in Ireland for thirteen pence each.