“Ay! so I thought; and, provided your father were restored to the farm, would you be still disposed to become a priest?”
“I would, sir; next to helping my father, that is what I wish to be.”
“O'Brien, what would it cost to prepare him respectably for the priesthood?—I mean to defray his expenses until he completes his preparatory education, in the first place, and afterwards during his residence in Maynooth?”
“I think two hundred pounds, sir, would do it easily and respectably.”
“I do not think it would. However, do you send him—but first let me ask what progress he has already made?”
“He has read—in fact he is nearly prepared to enter Maynooth. His progress has been very rapid.”
“Put him to some respectable boarding-school for a year; then let him enter Maynooth, and I will bear the expense. But remember I do not adopt this course in consequence of his father's history. Not I, by Jupiter; I do it on his own account. He is a noble boy, and full of fine qualities, if they be not nipped by neglect and poverty. I loved my father myself, and fought a duel on his account; and I honor the son who has spirit to defend his absent parent.”
“This is a most surprising turn in the boy's fortunes, Colonel.”
“He deserves it. A soldier, Mr. O'Brien, is not without his enthusiasm, nor can he help admiring it in others, when nobly and virtuously directed. To see a boy in the midst of poverty, encountering the hardships and difficulties of life, with the hope of raising up his parents from distress to independence, has a touch of sublimity in it.”
“Ireland, Colonel, abounds with instances of similar virtue, brought out, probably, into fuller life and vigor by the sad changes and depressions which are weighing down the people. In her glens, on her bleak mountain sides, and in her remotest plains, such examples of pure affection, uncommon energy, and humble heroism, are to be seen; but, unfortunately, few persons of rank or observation mingle with the Irish people, and their many admirable qualities pass away without being recorded in the literature of their country. They are certainly a strange people, Colonel, almost an anomaly in the history of the human race. They are the only people who can rush out from the very virtues of private life to the perpetration of crimes at which we shudder. There is, to be sure, an outcry about their oppression; but that is wrong. Their indigence and ignorance are rather the result of neglect;—of neglect, sir, from the government of the country—from the earl to the squireen. They have been taught little that is suitable to their stations and duties in life, either as tenants who cultivate our lands, or as members of moral or Christian society.”