Here Mr Sweeny facetiously gave him a slap on the crown of the hat, which drove it down, and stuck it gracefully over his eye, thereby breaking the thread of his discourse. He then addressed the fair Catherine; but all his eloquence and profundity were unavailing to induce her to return with him in the gig. She would listen to nothing but the carriage, and as room could not be made for him inside, he mounted the box, leaving the gig to any one that pleased to have it. Nor was it long untenanted. Frank Costello and Bill Nowlan mounted together, and were found in it next morning fast asleep, in the stable-lane behind Mr Sharpe’s house, the horse having found his way home when left to his own guidance.
The remainder of the party arrived as safely, but somewhat more regularly, in the evening of their eventful day, and all dissatisfied except Mr O’Gorman, and
Naisi.
STREET TACTICS.
You, most respectable reader, who owe no man any thing that you are not able and willing to pay, may know nothing of the tactics alluded to in the title of this paper. But there is, you may depend upon it, a pretty numerous class of the community to whom these tactics are quite familiar, and who practise them to a greater or lesser extent every day of their lives.
Street tactics, let us define the term, is the art or science of avoiding all persons on the streets, and all places in the streets—shops, for instance—whom and which, for particular reasons of your own, you are desirous of eschewing.
The art is thus one of deep concernment to the whole of that numerous and respectable body known by the generic name of “gentlemen in difficulties.” This term, however, is one of very extensive signification, and includes various descriptions of gentlemen as well as difficulties; but on the present occasion we mean to confine ourselves to one particular class—the gentlemen whose difficulties arise from their having more creditors than crowns—the gentlemen who have contrived to surround themselves with a large constituency of the former, and who cannot by any means contrive to get hold of an adequate supply of the latter—the gentlemen who are sufficiently respectable to get into debt, but not sufficiently wealthy to get out of it.
The reader can have no idea how difficult a matter it is for a gentleman of this description to work his way through the streets, so as to avoid all unpleasant encounters; how serious a matter it is for him to move from one point of the city to another. To him the streets are, in fact, as difficult and dangerous to traverse as if they were strewed with heated plough-shares, or lined with concealed pitfalls. He cannot move a hundred yards, unless he moves warily, without encountering somebody to whom he owes something, or passing some shop where his name is not in the most savoury odour.
It is, then, the manœuvring necessary to avoid those disagreeables that constitutes street tactics, and confers on the gentleman who practises them the character of what we would call a street tactician.