During all these compliments Jem smoked placidly. I had forgotten one of the most serious duties of a novelist—the description of Jem's toilette. I had forgotten to say that a black pilot coat with velvet collar, red silk handkerchief,
etc., was a veritable Nessus shirt to Jem. So passionately fond of work was he, and so high an idea had he conceived on the sacredness and nobleness of work, that integuments savoring of Sabbath indolence were particularly intolerable to him. He moved about stiffly in them, was glad to shake them off, and resume his white, lime-stained, patched, and torn, but oh! such luxuriously easy garments of every-day life. Then I regret to have to record an act of supreme vanity, that might be pardonable or venial in a young lady going to a ball or coming out in her first concert, but was simply shocking in a middle-aged man going out to Mass on a Sunday morning. Jem Deady actually powdered his face! I do not say that it was violet powder or that he used a puff. His methods were more primitive and more successful. He went to a pot where lime was seething, or rather had been seething. He took up the thick lumps and crushed them into dust. He made his face as white as if he were going to play the king in Macbeth, and Banquo's ghost was arising; and he turned his glossy locks into a cadaverous and premature grayness, and Bess didn't like it. She wanted to see him only one Sunday in "his best shuit"; but Jem, unkind fellow, would not grant her that gratification.
Where was I? Oh, yes!
Jem, nothing loth, "ruz" the "Suwanee River," and accompanying himself on an imaginary banjo, drew tears from all eyes by singing, with mingled pathos and regret:—
"All the world am sad and dreary
Eberywhere I roam;
Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home."
Then commenced a fresh cross-fire of chaff.
"The gintlemin in the orchaystra will now favor the company wit' a song."
Suddenly one young rascal shouted out:—
"Begor, perhaps it's badin' ye were goin'. Don't ye know the rigulations of the coast? If ye were caught takin' off even yere hats here without puttin' on a badin' dress, ye'd be dragged before the Mayor and Lord Lieutenant of Kilronan, and get six weeks' paynal servitude."
Then suddenly a bright idea seemed to dawn on these scamps. There was a good deal of whispering, and nodding, and pointing; and at last Jem Deady stepped forward, and in a voice full of awe and sorrow he said:—