‘And,’ continued I, ‘as my dinner won’t be very splendid, and I’m sure to have it very vilely cooked, I’ll bring forth a bottle or two of my supernaculum—the rale mountain dew.’
‘Ay, ay, sur,’ responds Jimmy. ‘D was a drunkard that had a red face.’
There was a good hit of stupidity! By the staff of St Patrick, the patron of drunkards, it was the keenest cut I ever received in my life, and the innocence with which it was spoken gave it double effect. I fairly blushed, and dropped my face over my breast like a great bursting peony whose stalk is too weak to support it. Ah! my friend, happy would I have been to endure those little embarrassments—however unbecoming for me to blush—did I foresee the losses, crosses, confusions and contusions which followed in the train of this comet, and which I might have expected, for I partly concur in the old opinion that the fiery prodigies of the heavens prognosticate dire disasters to man; and the eccentric course of this ‘hairy star’ in this little world of mine called Ballygrish was equally portentous. But hitherto he had kept within bounds. So long as he believed himself the schollard and I the schoolmaster, he conducted himself according to the belief; and the most fault-finding teacher could not complain of Jimmy’s want of diligence. Indeed, he rehearsed his lesson much oftener than necessary, in season and out of season, in bed and out of bed, and that in such a thundering tone, that I told him his constant petition to ‘hear him his task’ was unnecessary, as I always ‘heard’ him sufficiently well, though stone walls were betwixt us. But once he became independent of an instructor, once he was quit of my assistance, I do assure you severe chastisement was frequently necessary to restrain his lunacies, and I much wonder how his skull bore the thumps and cracks which from day to day I was obliged to inflict, in lieu of shaving and blistering, to moderate the brain fever of the imagination—of ‘the ascendant idea.’
I put up with various annoyances and inconveniences with admirable patience and temper, and which I shall not now stop to particularize; but one affair I cannot pass over, as it made a haul on my purse, and I’ll relate it.
Just about the time that he set up to study for himself, I was much in want of a pair of new inexpressibles. My velveteens were much the worse for wear, and I was determined to have a bran-new pair for the ensuing Sunday. So I sent, very thoughtlessly indeed, the said student Jimmy Delany with an order to Bryan the tailor to get the requisite stuff at a certain shop. Unfortunately I did not specify any particular colour or material, thinking naturally that all the world knew the colours and materials fitting for clergymen; but the shopkeeper and tailor—neither very much wiser than my messenger, I fancy—were quite astray, and in their dilemma they applied to my man-of-all-works for information. Alas! they knew little of poor Jimmy. They knew not that he was then under the dominion of ‘one idea’—that he was a learned schollard, and not a sarvint.
Now be it known to you that his then study was the Universal Spelling Book (I believe he had it in his pocket at the time), in which is the story of the town in danger of being besieged. The mason, the currier, and the carpenter, give their opinion as to the best method of fortifying it, and each, of course, with an eye to self-interest. The mason recommends stone, the carpenter oak, and the currier leather.
Well, at the instant of the shopkeeper’s and tailor’s deliberations on my wearables, Jimmy stood at the shop-door, staring up and down the street, as far as it was in his ken; and when the tailor appealed to him to know ‘what sort of inexpressibles did his masther ordher,’ honest Jimmy, thinking but of the ‘town in danger of being besieged,’ answered in the words of the currier, ‘take my word for it, there is nothing like leather.’
‘Leather!’ echoed the shopkeeper.
‘Leather!’ screamed the tailor.
‘Ay,’ repeated Jimmy decidedly, ‘there is nothing like leather!’