"Well, Frank."
"You may write a polite letter to the Castle, and decline the commission."
Half a century has passed, but ninety-eight is still, by oral communications, well known to the Irish peasant; and would that its horrors carried with them salutary reminiscences! But to my own story.
Instead of fattening beeves, planting trees, clapping vagabonds "i' th' stocks," and doing all and everything that appertaineth to a country gentleman, and also, the queen's poor esquire, I might have, until the downfall of Napoleon, and the reduction of the militia, events cotemporaneous, smelt powder on the Phoenix Park on field days, and like Hudibras, of pleasant memory, at the head of a charge of foot, "rode forth a coloneling." In place, however, of meddling with cold iron, I yielded to "metal more attractive," and in three months became a Benedict, and in some dozen more a papa.
In the mean time, rebellion was bloodily put down, and on my lady's recovery, my father, whose yearning for a return to the old roof-tree was irresistible, prepared for our departure from the metropolis.
Curiously enough, we passed through Prosperous, exactly on the anniversary of the day when we had so providentially effected an invasion from certain destruction. Were aught required to elicit gratitude for a fortunate escape, two objects, and both visible from the inn windows, would have been sufficient. One was a mass of blackened ruins—the scathed walls of the barrack, in which the wretched garrison had been so barbarously done to death: the other a human head impaled upon a spike on the gable of the building. That blanched skull had rested on the shoulders of our traitor host, and we, doomed to "midnight murder," were mercifully destined to witness a repulsive, but just evidence, that Providence interposes often between the villain and the victim.
I am certain that in my physical construction, were an analysis practicable, small would be the amount of heroic proportions which the most astute operator would detect. I may confess the truth, and say, that in "lang syne," any transient ebullition of military ardor vanished at a glance from Constance's black eye. The stream of time swept on, and those that were, united their dust with those that had been. In a short time my letter of readiness may be expected; and I shall, in nature's course, after the last march, as Byron says, ere long
"Take my rest."
And will the succession end with me? Tell it not to Malthes, nor whisper it to Harriet Martineau. There is no prospect of advertising for the next of kin, i.e. if five strapping boys and a couple of the fair sex may be considered a sufficient security.