In form, Pat is lithe and trim; in face, a very Hibernian Apollo—if one may conceive an Apollo with a nose decidedly tip-tilted. All the same, Pat's facial development is good. His mouth is finely cut, with odd little smiles forever dimpling its handsome corners. His eyes are coal black, his hair ditto; and such curls! They are Pat's special weakness—the darlings of his heart! And it is known among the prison officers that Pat, having been bidden to submit these cherished raven wings to the initiatory prison shearing, had stoutly refused compliance to the "Powers that be;" and had actually endured the horrors of a three days' "Solitary" in defence of the inalienable right of an Irish-American citizen to the peaceful possession of his own hair!
In repose, Pat's visage has that air of demure mischief which lurks in the visage of a frolicsome kitten, dozing, with one eye open, in the sunshine. This is Pat's story; and looking into prison life, you will find it no uncommon one.
City-born, his juvenile days seem to have alternated unequally between chores and school, and to have exhibited long and frequent intervals of utter vagrancy. At twelve, he lost his mother (his father is a being entirely outside his knowledge), and, scrambling up to early manhood, as best he could, he finally rose to the dignity of a hack driver. Subsequently, Pat became an expert tippler. The two pursuits (as one must often have observed) do not in the least antagonize. Thus it eventually came to pass that, with Pat, to be tipsy was the general rule; to be sober, the rare exception. It was after the great snow-fall of 18—, that our hero resolved to "trate himself" to a sleigh-ride. Sleigh-rides, in his line, were, to be sure, every-day occurrences, but this, as he explained, in his own rich brogue, was to be "a good social time, all aloon be meself."
To this end (temporarily entrusting his hack to a friendly fellow Jehu) Mr. Doniver hired a fine horse and cutter, and, with the same, "to kape himself warrum," a big buffalo robe. Thus amply equipped, and having his pockets well lined with small coin, Pat set merrily forth. The day was bitterly cold, the drinks delightfully warm, and, somehow, he took by the way more refreshment than he had, at the outset, counted on. Indeed, if truth must be told, at an early period in this jolly excursion Pat had reached that complex mental condition in which to count at all is a most difficult matter, and, as the day wore on,—save a confused consciousness of more drinks in sundry bars than cash in a certain pocket,—Pat altogether lost his reckoning. In this awkward dilemma, it naturally occurred to our thirsty excursionist to dispose of certain marketable personal effects immediately at hand. Having at various halting-places drunk out his big silver watch, a huge pencil of the same salable metal, his new red silk bandanna, his pocketbook and pocket-comb, a smart new necktie, bought expressly for this superb occasion, and, last of all, his drab, many-caped overcoat, it now became obvious to his mind that, in the increasing warmth of temperature,—consequent upon infinite potations,—a buffalo robe was but the merest of superfluities. Having arrived at this stoical conclusion, Pat, thereafter, retains but a confused recollection of this disastrous excursion. "An obleegin' gintlemun," as he remembers, had the goodness to exchange whiskey for wild buffaloes, which he, Pat, proposed to hunt and drive hither in countless herds. Pat awoke the next morning, to find himself in the lock-up, charged with drunkenness and the theft of a buffalo robe.
The smart cutter, with its unconscious occupant, had been obligingly delivered by the fagged but sagacious steed to its proprietor, who, minus his buffalo robe, had, in turn, delivered Pat to the police.
On this count, deposited in jail, Patrick passed the sorry interval between commitment and trial in fighting the blue devils, whose onsets, at this advanced stage of alcoholic excess, were not, as one may imagine, few or far between.
Pat had, however, a genuine Irish constitution, and no lack of Irish combativeness. And, unaided and alone, he grappled vigourously with the fierce devils of delirium tremens, and, had he not worsted them, unaided and alone, he would probably have perished. Destiny, however, having better (and also worse) things in store for Mr. Doniver, he did, at last, worst them, and, when the day for his trial came, he was—for once in his adult existence—austerely sober.
And now it would not have gone hard with the fellow, since this petty larceny might have been expiated by a short term in the House of Correction, had not one of those mischievous birds who carry tales whispered in court that Pat Doniver was a notorious drunkard.
"Inebriation," severely remarked the judge to the counsel on his left, whose breath exhaled an unmistakable odour of brandy, "inebriation, sir, is becoming rampant in our community, and I shall find it my duty to make of the case before me an impressive example;" and thereupon, the jury having already returned a verdict of guilty, the judge, fidgeting in his seat (his dinner hour being long since passed, and his temper somewhat choleric), looked straight at Pat, thought of the alarming increase of drunkenness in our midst, and gave him five years in the State Prison.