“It’s the Wicklow boy, sir. The musicians are down on him to an extent you can’t imagine.”
“Well, go on, go on. What has he been doing?”
“Prayin’, sir.”
“Praying!”
“Yes, sir; the musicians haven’t any peace of their life for that boy’s prayin’. First thing in the morning he’s at it; noons he’s at it; and nights—well, nights he just lays into ’em like all possessed! Sleep? Bless you, they can’t sleep: he’s got the floor, as the sayin’ is, and then when he once gets his supplication-mill a-goin’, there just simply ain’t any let-up to him. He starts in with the band-master, and he prays for him; next he takes the head bugler, and he prays for him; next the bass drum, and he scoops him in; and so on, right straight through the band, givin’ them all a show, and takin’ that amount of interest in it which would make you think he thought he warn’t but a little while for this world, and believed he couldn’t be happy in heaven without he had a brass band along, and wanted to pick ’em out for himself, so he could depend on ’em to do up the national tunes in a style suitin’ to the place. Well, sir, heavin’ boots at him don’t have no effect; it’s dark in there; and, besides, he don’t pray fair, anyway, but kneels down behind the big drum; so it don’t make no difference if they rain boots at him, he don’t give a dern—warbles right along, same as if it was applause. They sing out, ‘Oh, dry up!’ ‘Give us a rest!’ ‘Shoot him!’ ‘Oh, take a walk!’ and all sorts of such things. But what of it? It don’t phaze him. He don’t mind it.” After a pause: “Kind of a good little fool, too; gits up in the mornin’ and carts all that stock of boots back, and sorts ’em out and sets each man’s pair where they belong. And they’ve been throwed at him so much now, that he knows every boot in the band,—can sort ’em out with his eyes shut.”
After another pause, which I forebore to interrupt,—
“But the roughest thing about it is, that when he’s done prayin’,—when he ever does get done,—he pipes up and begins to sing. Well, you know what a honey kind of a voice he’s got when he talks; you know how it would persuade a cast-iron dog to come down off of a doorstep and lick his hand. Now if you’ll take my word for it, sir, it ain’t a circumstance to his singin’! Flute music is harsh to that boy’s singin’. Oh, he just gurgles it out so soft and sweet and low, there in the dark, that it makes you think you are in heaven.”
“What is there ‘rough’ about that?”
“Ah, that’s just it, sir. You hear him sing
“‘Just as I am—poor, wretched, blind,’