“Hand me that stone, child!” in his hand ’tis placed;
Down-channeling his cheeks are tears like rain;
The stone within his handkerchief is cased,
And then I pillow on it Jillen’s head again.
And how can I help thinking of the wreck and ruin that come upon the Irish race in the foreign land! One in a hundred may live and prosper, and stand to be looked at as a living monument of the prosperity, but ninety-nine in a hundred are lost, never to be heard of. The six O’Donovan brothers that I saw sail out from the Cove of Cork—the sons of Patrick O’Donovan-Rossa and Mary O’Sullivan-Buadhaig—came to be known as men in the First Ward of New York a few years after—Den, Dan, Jerrie, John, Conn and Florrie Donovan; all of them dead; one only descendant belonging to them, living at the present day.
And what a change came in my own life and in my own character during the six or seven years that transpired after those cousins of mine left Ross. The day they left, my parish priest, Father Michael O’Hea, gave me a good character, as a “smart, intelligent young lad,” recommending me to the world as one who would be found “honest and trustworthy.” Seven years after, the two of us were living in Skibbereen, and he, as Bishop O’Hea, turned me away from his confessional, telling me not to come to him any more. I had become a Fenian; his “smart, intelligent young lad” had turned out to be a bad boy. Such is life. As this is jumping ahead of my story a little, and rushing into the cross part of my “Recollections” I will jump back again, and tell how I got on after I came home from Cork.
My mother had a message before me from Morty Downing, telling me he wished I would go back to him again, and that all my bad deeds would be forgiven and forgotten. I went back to him, at my £2 a year salary. The first investment I made out of that salary was to purchase the whole stock in trade of Eugene Daly, a book-seller, who hawked books around the town and country. I bought his entire stock at one penny a volume, and they came just to £1—240 volumes. Then he bought a pound’s worth of knives and scissors and razors and small cutlery in the shop, and the price of them was put against my salary.
That box of literature, as I call it—for I bought box and all—very soon brought me to grief—well, not exactly that, but it very soon got me into trouble. My bedroom was not the very best room in the house. It was a kind of garret, in which were stored lots of old newspapers. Mr. Downing had been one of the Young Irelanders, and he had stored in my room all the Repeal and Young Ireland newspapers of the previous five or six years. As soon as I’d get to bed at night I’d read in bed, and I’d fall asleep reading, leaving the candle lighting. Some little fire accident occurred that Kittie reported to the governor—some of the bedclothes had burned holes in them, and Kittie got orders not to give me any more candlesticks going to bed. Another accident occurred: I had two nails driven into the partition, above my pillow. I kept a lighted candle between the two nails. I fell asleep reading. When I awoke I was in a blaze. The partition had burned in it a hole that I could run my fist through. I had to make an open confession this time, and to solemnly promise I would never again read in bed.
My employer got into the wool, cotton, and flax business, and occasionally had contracts for supplying those materials to the Poor Law Unions of Skibbereen, Bantry, and Kenmare. In connection with those contracts I, a few times, visited the Poor Law Boards of Kenmare and Bantry. In Kenmare I was the guest of my employer’s brother, Dan Downing of the Washington Hotel. He was married to the sister of William Murphy, the architect, who kept a hotel in Bantry. Oh! they’re all dead now. And I suppose those handsome Kerry girls that played their nettlesome-night joke on me that night, are dead too. They could find no bedroom candlestick to give me; they showed me the bedroom, telling me the door was open. I went to bed, and as I rolled the clothes around me I found myself imbedded in nettles. At the breakfast table next morning, Mrs. Downing hoped I had a good night’s sleep. I asked her which of the girls was the chambermaid, and I saw they had the laugh on me.
And very likely all the Kenmare men of that day are dead also. And good Irishmen they were:—John Fitzmaurice Donnelly, Patsy Glanney, Long Humphrey Murphy, Myles Downing, Paddy the Gauger, and others of that company. Stewart Trench, the land-agent of Lord Lansdowne, was that time in his glory—evicting the Lansdowne tenantry. The stories I heard of him moved me to parody that Robinson Crusoe poem, about him. Here are a few of the verses: