CHAPTER III.
Mrs. Dolly, who had been unaccountably awed to silence by Mr. Belton’s manner of speaking and looking, broke forth the moment he had left the house. “Very genteel, indeed; though he might have taken more notice of me. See what, it is, George, to have the luck of meeting with good friends.”
“See what it is to deserve good friends, George,” said Ellen.
“You’ll all remember, I hope,” said Mrs. Dolly, raising her voice, “that it was I who was the first and foremost cause of all this, by taking George along with me to the tea-drinking at the bowling-green, where he first got acquainted with Mr. Belton.”
“Mr. Belton would never have troubled his head about such a little boy as George,” said Ellen, “if it had not been for—you know what I mean, Mrs. Dolly. All I wish to say is, that George’s own good behaviour was the cause of our getting acquainted with this good friend.”
“And I am sure you were the cause, mother,” said George, “of what you call my good behaviour.”
Mrs. Dolly, somewhat vexed at this turn, changed the conversation saying, “Well, ‘tis no matter how we made such a good acquaintance; let us make the most of him, and drink his health, as becomes us, after dinner. And now, I suppose, all will go on as usual: none of our acquaintance in Paddington need know any thing of what has happened.”
Ellen, who was very little solicitous about what Mrs. Dolly’s acquaintance in Paddington might think, observed that, so far from going on as usual, now they were living on borrowed money, it was fit they should retrench all their expenses, and give up the drawing-room and parlour of the house to lodgers.
“So, then, we are to live like shabby wretches for the rest of our days!” cried Mrs. Dolly. “Better live like what we are, poor but industrious people,” replied Ellen, “and then we shall never be forced to do any thing shabby.”
“Ay, Ellen, you are, as you always are, in the right; and all I desire now, in this world, is to make up for the past, and to fall to work in some way or other; for idleness was what first led me to the gaming-table.”
Mrs. Dolly opposed these good resolutions, and urged Maurice to send George to Mr. Belton, to beg him to lend them some more money. “Since he is in the humour to be generous, and since he has taken a fancy to us,” said she, “why not take him at his word, and make punch whilst the water’s hot?”
But all that Mrs. Dolly said was lost upon Ellen, who declared that she would never be so mean as to encroach upon such a generous friend; and Maurice protested that nothing that man, woman, or devil, could say, should persuade him to live in idleness another year. He sent George the next morning to Mr. Belton with a letter, requesting that he would procure employment for him, and stating what he thought himself fit for. Amongst other things, he mentioned that he could keep accounts. That he could write a good hand was evident, from his letter. Mr. Belton, at this time, wanted a clerk in his manufactory; and, upon Maurice’s repeating his promise never more to frequent the gaming-table, Mr. Belton, after a trial, engaged him as his clerk, at a salary of 501. per annum.
Every thing now went on well for some months. Maurice, on whom his wife’s kindness had made a deep impression, became thoroughly intent upon his business, and anxious to make her some amends for his past follies. His heart was now at ease: he came home, after his day’s work at the counting-house, with an open, cheerful countenance; and Ellen was perfectly happy. They sold all the furniture that was too fine for their present way of life to the new lodgers, who took the drawing-room and front parlour of their house; and lived on the profits of their shop, which, being well attended, was never in want of customers.
One night, at about ten o’clock, as little George was sitting, reading the history of Sandford and Merton, in which he was much interested, he was roused by a loud knocking at the house door. He ran to open it: but how much was he shocked at the sight he beheld! It was Mrs. Dolly! her leg broken, and her skull fractured!
Ellen had her brought in, and laid upon a bed, and a surgeon was immediately sent for. When Maurice inquired how this terrible accident befel Mrs. Dolly, the account he received was, that she was riding home from the bowling-green public-house, much intoxicated; that she insisted upon stopping to get a glass of peppermint and brandy for her stomach; that, seeing she had drunk too much already, every thing possible was done to prevent her from taking any more; but she would not be advised: she said she knew best what agreed with her constitution; so she alighted and took the brandy and peppermint; and when she was to get upon her horse again, not being in her right senses, she insisted upon climbing up by a gate that was on the road-side, instead of going, as she was advised, to a bank that was a little further on. The gate was not steady, the horse being pushed moved, she fell, broke her leg, and fractured her skull.
She was a most shocking spectacle when she was brought home. At first she was in great agony; but she afterwards fell into a sort of stupor, and lay speechless.
The surgeon arrived: he set her leg; and during this operation, she came to her senses, but it was only the sensibility of pain. She was then trepanned; but all was to no purpose—she died that night; and of all the friends, as she called them, who used to partake in her tea-drinkings and merry-makings, not one said more when they heard of her death than “Ah, poor Mrs. Dolly! she was always fond of a comfortable glass: ‘twas a pity it was the death of her at last.”
Several tradesmen, to whom she died in debt, were very loud in their complaints; and the landlady at the bowling-green did not spare her memory. She went so far as to say, that it was a shame such a drunken quean should have a Christian burial. What little clothes Mrs. Dolly left at her death were given up to her creditors. She had owed Maurice ten guineas ever since the first month of their coming to Paddington; and when she was on her death-bed, during one of the intervals that she was in her senses, she beckoned to Maurice, and told him, in a voice scarcely intelligible, he would find in her left-hand pocket what she hoped would pay him the ten guineas he had lent to her. However, upon searching this pocket, no money was to be found, except sixpence in halfpence; nor was there any thing of value about her. They turned the pocket inside out, and shook it; they opened every paper that came out of it, but these were all old bills. Ellen at last examined a new shawl which had been thrust into this pocket, and which was all crumpled up: she observed that one of the corners was doubled down, and pinned; and upon taking out the yellow crooked pin, she discovered, under the corner of the shawl, a bit of paper, much soiled with snuff, and stained with liquor. “How it smells of brandy!” said Ellen, as she opened it. “What is it, Maurice?”
“It is not a bank note. It is a lottery ticket, I do believe!” cried Maurice. “Ay, that it is! She put into the lottery without letting us know any thing of the matter. Well, as she said, perhaps this may pay me my ten guineas, and overpay me, who knows? We were lucky with our last ticket; and why should not we be as lucky with this, or luckier, hey, Ellen? We might have ten thousand pounds or twenty thousand pounds this time, instead of five, why not, hey, Ellen?” But Maurice observing that Ellen looked grave, and was not much charmed with the lottery ticket, suddenly changed his tone, and said, “Now don’t you, Ellen, go to think that my head will run on nothing but this here lottery ticket. It will make no difference on earth in me: I shall mind my business just as well as if there was no such thing, I promise you. If it come up a prize, well and good: and if it come up a blank, why well and good too. So do you keep the ticket, and I shall never think more about it, Ellen. Only, before you put it by, just let me look at the number. What makes you smile?”
“I smiled only because I think I know you better than you, know yourself. But, perhaps, that should not make me smile,” said Ellen: and she gave a deep sigh.
“Now, wife, why will you sigh? I can’t bear to hear you sigh,” said Maurice, angrily. “I tell you I know myself, and have a right to know myself, I say, a great deal better than you do; and so none of your sighs, wife.”
Ellen rejoiced to see that his pride worked upon him in this manner; and mildly told him she was very glad to find he thought so much about her sighs. “Why,” said Maurice, “you are not one of those wives that are always taunting and scolding their husbands; and that’s the reason, I take it, why a look or a word from you goes so far with me.” He paused for a few moments, keeping his eyes fixed upon the lottery ticket; then, snatching it up, he continued: “This lottery ticket may tempt me to game again: for, as William Deane said, putting into the lottery is gaming, and the worst sort of gaming. So, Ellen, I’ll show you that though I was a fool once, I’ll never be a fool again. All your goodness was not thrown away upon me. I’ll go and sell this lottery ticket immediately at the office, for whatever it is worth: and you’ll give me a kiss when I come home again, I know, Ellen.”
Maurice, pleased with his own resolution, went directly to the lottery office to sell his ticket. He was obliged to wait some time, for the place was crowded with persons who came to inquire after tickets which they had insured.
Many of these ignorant imprudent poor people had hazarded guinea after guinea, till they found themselves overwhelmed with debt; and their liberty, character, and existence, depending on the turning of the wheel. What anxious faces did Maurice behold! How many he heard, as they went out of the office, curse their folly for having put into the lottery!
He pressed forward to sell his ticket. How rejoiced he was when he had parted with this dangerous temptation, and when he had received seventeen guineas in hand, instead of anxious hopes! How different were his feelings at this instant from those of many that were near him! He stood to contemplate the scene. Here he saw a poor maid-servant, with scarcely clothes to cover her, who was stretching her thin neck across the counter, and asking the clerk, in a voice of agony, whether her ticket, number 45, was come up yet.
“Number 45?” answered the clerk, with the most careless air imaginable. “Yes” (turning over the leaves of his book): “Number 45, you say—Yes: it was drawn yesterday—a blank.” The wretched woman clasped her hands, and burst into tears, exclaiming, “Then I’m undone!”
Nobody seemed to have time to attend to her. A man servant, in livery, pushed her away, saying, “You have your answer, and have no more business here, stopping the way. Pray, sir, is number 336, the ticket I’ve insured {Footnote: This was written before the act of parliament against insuring in lotteries.} so high, come up to-day?”
“Yes, sir—blank.” At the word blank, the disappointed footman poured forth a volley of oaths, declaring that he should be in jail before night; to all which the lottery-office keeper only answered, “I can’t help it, sir; I can’t help it. It is not my fault. Nobody is forced to put into the lottery, sir. Nobody’s obliged to insure, sir. ‘Twas your own choice, sir. Don’t blame me.”
Meanwhile, a person behind the footman, repeating the words he had addressed to the poor woman, cried, “You have your answer, sir; don’t stop the way.”
Maurice was particularly struck with the agitated countenance of one man, who seemed as if the suspense of his mind had entirely bereaved him of all recollection. When he was pressed forward by the crowd, and found himself opposite to the clerk, he was asked twice, “What’s your business, sir?” before he could speak; and then could only utter the words—number 7? “Still in the wheel,” was the answer. “Our messenger is not yet returned from Guildhall, with news of what has been drawn this last hour. If you will call again at three, we can answer you.” The man seemed to feel this as a reprieve; but as he was retiring, there came one with a slip of paper in his hand. This was the messenger from Guildhall, who handed the paper to the clerk. He read aloud, “Number 7. Were you not inquiring for 7, sir?”
“Yes,” said the pale trembling man.
“Number 7 is just come up, sir,—a blank.”
At the fatal word blank, the man fell flat upon his face in a swoon. Those near him lifted him out into the street, for air.
“Here, sir; you are going without your change, after waiting for it so long,” cried the clerk to Maurice; who, touched with compassion for the man who had just fallen, was following those who were carrying him out. When he got into the street, Maurice saw the poor creature sitting on a stone, supported by a hackney-coachman, who held some vinegar to his nose, at the same time asking him if he did not want a coach?
“A coach! Oh, no,” said the man, as he opened his eyes. “I have not a farthing of money in the world.” The hackney-coachman swore that was a sad case, and ran across the street to offer his services where they could be paid for: “A coach, if you want one, sir. Heavy rain coming on,” said he, looking at the silver which he saw through the half-closed fingers of Maurice’s hand.
“Yes, I want a coach,” said Maurice: and bade the coachman draw up to the stone, where the poor man who had swooned was sitting. Maurice was really a good-natured fellow; and he had peculiar pity for the anguish this man seemed to feel, because he recollected what he had suffered himself, when he had been ruined at the gaming-table.
“You are not able to walk: here is a coach; I will go your way and set you down, sir,” said Maurice.
The unfortunate man accepted this offer. As they went along he sighed bitterly, and once said, with great vehemence, “Curse these lotteries! Curse these lotteries!” Maurice now rejoiced, more than ever, at having conquered his propensity to gaming, and at having sold his ticket.
When they came opposite to a hosier’s shop, in Oxford-street, the stranger thanked him, and desired to be set down. “This is my home,” said he; “or this was my home, I ought to say,” pointing to his shop as he let down the coach-glass. “A sad warning example I am! But I am troubling you, sir, with what no way concerns you. I thank you, sir, for your civility,” added he, turning away from Maurice, to hide the tears which stood in his eyes: “good day to you.”
He then prepared to get out of the coach; but whilst the coachman was letting down the step, a gentleman came out of the hosier’s shop to the door, and cried, “Mr. Fulham, I am glad you are come at last. I have been waiting for you this half-hour, and was just going away.” Maurice pulled aside the flap of the hosier’s coat, as he was getting out, that he might peep at the gentleman who spoke; the voice was so like William Deane’s, that he was quite astonished.—“It is—it is William Deane,” cried Maurice, jumping out of the coach and shaking hands with his friend.
William Deane, though now higher in the world than Robinson, was heartily glad to see him again, and to renew their old intimacy. “Mr. Fulham,” said he, turning to the hosier, “excuse me to-day; I’ll come and settle accounts with you to-morrow.”
On their way to Paddington, Maurice related to his friend all that had passed since they parted; how his good luck in the lottery tempted him to try his fortune at the gaming-table; how he was cheated by sharpers, and reduced to the brink of utter ruin; how kind Ellen was towards him in this distress; how he was relieved by Mr. Belton, who was induced to assist him from regard to Ellen and little George; how Mrs. Dolly drank herself into ill health, which would soon have killed her if she had not, in a drunken fit, shortened the business by fracturing her skull; and, lastly, how she left him a lottery ticket, which he had just sold, lest it should be the cause of fresh imprudence. “You see,” added Maurice, “I do not forget all you said to me about lotteries.—Better take good advice late than never. But now, tell me your history.”
“No,” replied William Deane; “that I shall keep till we are all at dinner; Ellen and you, I and my friend George, who, I hope, has not forgotten me.” He was soon convinced that George had not forgotten him, by the joy he showed at seeing him again.
At dinner, William Deane informed them that he was become a rich man, by having made an improvement in the machinery of the cotton-mills, which, after a great deal of perseverance, he had brought to succeed in practice. “When I say that I am a rich man,” continued he, “I mean richer than ever I expected to be. I have a share in the cotton-mill, and am worth about two thousand pounds.”
“Ay,” said Maurice, “you have trusted to your own sense and industry, and not to gaming and lotteries.”
“I am heartily rejoiced you have nothing more to do with them,” said William Deane: “but all this time you forget that I am your debtor. You lent me five guineas at a season when I had nothing. The books I bought with your money helped me to knowledge, without which I should never have got forward. Now I have a scheme for my little friend George, that will, I hope, turn out to your liking. You say he is an intelligent, honest, industrious lad; and that he understands book-keeping, and writes a good hand: I am sure he is much obliged to you for giving him a good education.”
“To his mother, there, he’s obliged for it all,” said Maurice.
“Without it,” continued William Deane, “I might wish him very well; but I could do little or nothing for him. But, as I was going to tell you, that unfortunate man whom you brought to his own door in the hackney-coach to-day, Maurice, is a hosier, who had as good a business as most in the city; but he has ruined himself entirely by gaming. He is considerably in our debt for cotton, and I am to settle accounts with him to-morrow, when he is to give up all his concerns into my hands, in behalf of his brother, who has commissioned me to manage the business, and dissolve the partnership; as he cannot hazard himself, even out of friendship for a brother, with one that has taken to gaming. Now my friend, the elder Fulham, is a steady man, and is in want of a good lad for an apprentice. With your leave, I will speak to him, and get him to take George; and as to the fee, I will take care and settle that for you. I am glad I have found you all out at last. No thanks, pray. Recollect, I am only paying my old debts.”
As William Deane desired to have no thanks, we shall omit the recital of those which he received, both in words and looks. We have only to inform our readers, further, that George was bound apprentice to the hosier; that he behaved as well as might be expected from his excellent education; that Maurice continued, in Mr. Belton’s service, to conduct himself so as to secure the confidence and esteem of his master; and that he grew fonder and fonder of home, and of Ellen, who enjoyed the delightful reflection that she had effected the happiness of her husband and her son.
May equal happiness attend every such good wife and mother! And may every man, who, like Maurice, is tempted to be a gamester, reflect that a good character, and domestic happiness, which cannot be won in any lottery, are worth more than the five thousand, or even the ten thousand pounds prize, let any Mrs. Dolly in Christendom say what she will to the contrary.
Sept. 1799.
ROSANNA.
CHAPTER I.
There are two sorts of content: one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence; the first is a virtue, the second a vice. Examples of both may be found in abundance in Ireland. There you may sometimes see a man in sound health submitting day after day to evils which a few hours’ labour would remedy; and you are provoked to hear him say, “It will do well enough for me. Didn’t it do for my father before me? I can make a shift with things for my time: any how, I’m content.”
This kind of content is indeed the bane of industry. But instances of a different sort may be found, in various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them we may behold men struggling with adversity with all the strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fortitude which must excite at once our pity and admiration.
In a pleasant village in the province of Leinster there lives a family of the name of Gray. Whether or not they are any way related to Old Robin Gray, history does not determine; but it is very possible that they are, because they came, it is said, originally from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however, in the obscurity which involves the early history of the most ancient and illustrious families, we proceed to less disputable and perhaps more useful facts. It is well known, that is, by all his neighbours, that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging prospects: he was the youngest of a large family, and the portion of his father’s property that fell to his share was but just sufficient to maintain his wife and three children. At his father’s death, he had but 100l. in ready money, and he was obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant water; and before the window, of one pane, a dunghill that, reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out the light, and filled the house with the most noisome smell. The ground sloped towards the house door; so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor was so damp and soft, that the print of the nails of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set down his foot. To be sure these nail-marks could scarcely be seen, except just near the door or where the light of the fire immediately shone; because, elsewhere, the smoke was so thick, that the pig might have been within a foot of you without your seeing him. The former inhabitants of this mansion had, it seems, been content without a chimney: and, indeed, almost without a roof; the couples and purlins of the roof having once given way, had never been repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch, so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary.
The prospect without doors was scarcely more encouraging to our hero than the scene within: the farm consisted of about forty acres; and the fences of the grazing-land were so bad, that the neighbours’ cattle took possession of it frequently by day, and always by night. The tillage-ground had been so ill managed by his predecessor, that the land was what is called quite out of heart.
If farmer Gray had also been out of heart, he and his family might at this hour have been beggars. His situation was thought desperate by many of his neighbours; and a few days after his father’s decease, many came to condole with him. Amongst the rest was “easy Simon;” or, as some called him, “soft Simon,” on account of his unresisting disposition, and contented, or, as we should rather name it, reckless temper. He was a sort of a half or a half quarter gentleman, had a small patrimony of a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, a place in the excise worth fifty more, and a mill, which might have been worth another hundred annually, had it not been suffered to stand still for many a year.
“Wheugh! Wheugh! What a bustle we are in! and what a world of trouble is here!” cried Simon, when he came to Gray’s house, and found him on the ladder taking off the decayed thatch; whilst one of his sons, a lad of about fourteen, was hard at work filling a cart from the dunghill, which blockaded the window. His youngest son, a boy of twelve, with a face and neck red with heat, was making a drain to carry off the water from the green pond; and Rose, the sister, a girl of ten years old, was collecting the ducks, which her mother was going to carry to her landlord’s to sell.
“Wheugh! Wheugh! Wheugh! Why what a world of bustle and trouble is here! Troth, Jemmy Gray, you’re in a bad way, sure enough! Poor cratur! Poor cratur!”
“No man,” replied Gray, “deserves to be called poor, that has his health, and the use of his limbs. Besides,” continued he, “have not I a good wife and good children: and, with those blessings, has not a man sufficient reason to be content?”
“Ay, to be sure: that’s the only way to get through this world,” said Simon; “whatever comes, just to take it easy, and be content. Content and a warm chimney corner is all in all, according to my notion.”
“Yes, Simon,” said Gray, laughing; “but your kind of content would never do for me. Content, that sits down in the chimney corner, and does nothing but smoke his pipe, will soon have the house about his ears; and then what will become of Content?”
“Time enough to think of that when it comes,” said Simon: “fretting never propped a house yet; and if it did, I would rather see it fall than fret.”
“But could not you prop the house,” said Gray, “without fretting?”
“Is it by putting my shoulders to it?” said Simon. “My shoulders have never been used to hard work, and don’t like it any way. As long as I can eat, drink, and sleep, and have a coat to my back, what matter for the rest? Let the world go as it will, I’m content. Shoo! Shoo! The button is off the neck of this great coat of mine, and how will I keep it on? A pin sure will do as well as a button, and better. Mrs. Gray, or Miss Rose, I’ll thank you kindly for a pin.”
He stuck the pin in the place of the button, to fasten the great coat round his throat, and walked off: it pricked his chin about a dozen times before the day was over; but he forgot the next day, and the next, and the next, to have the button sewed on. He was content to make shift, as he called it, with the pin. This is precisely the species of content which leads to beggary.
Not such the temper of our friend Gray. Not an inconvenience that he could remedy, by industry or ingenuity, was he content to endure; but necessary evils he bore with unshaken patience and fortitude. His house was soon new roofed and new thatched; the dunghill was removed, and spread over that part of his land which most wanted manure; the putrescent water of the standing pool was drained off, and fertilized a meadow; and the kitchen was never again overflowed in rainy weather, because the labour of half a day made a narrow trench which carried off the water. The prints of the shoe-nails were no longer visible in the floor; for the two boys trod dry mill seeds into the clay, and beat the floor well, till they rendered it quite hard and even. The rooms also were cleared of smoke, for Gray built a chimney; and the kitchen window, which had formerly been stuffed up, when the wind blew too hard, with an old or new hat, was glazed. There was now light in the house. Light! the great friend of cleanliness and order. The pig could now no longer walk in and out, unseen and unreproved; he ceased to be an inmate of the kitchen.
The kitchen was indeed so altered from what it had been during the reign of the last master, that he did not know it again. It was not in the least like a pig-sty. The walls were whitewashed; and shelves were put up, on which clean wooden and pewter utensils were ranged. There were no heaps of forlorn rubbish in the corners of the room; nor even an old basket, or a blanket, or a cloak, or a great coat thrown down, just for a minute, out of the girl’s way. No: Rose was a girl who always put every thing in its place; and she found it almost as easy to hang a coat, or a cloak, upon a peg, as to throw it down on the floor. She thought it as convenient to put the basket and turf-kish out of her way, when her brothers had brought in the potatoes and fuel, as to let them lie in the middle of the kitchen, to be stumbled over by herself and her mother, or to be gnawed and clawed by a cat and dog. These may seem trifles unworthy the notice of the historian; but trifles such as these contribute much to the comfort of a poor family, and therefore deserve a place in their simple annals.
It was a matter of surprise and censure to some of farmer Gray’s neighbours, that he began by laying out it could not be less than ten pounds (a great sum for him!) on his house and garden at the first setting out; when, to be sure, the land would have paid him better if the money had been laid out there. And why could not he make a shift to live on in the old cabin, for a while, as others had done before his time well enough? A poor man should be contented with a poor house. Where was the use, said they, of laying out the good ready penny in a way that would bring nothing in?
Farmer Gray calculated that he could not have laid out his money to better advantage; for by these ten pounds he had probably saved his wife, his children, and himself, from a putrid fever, or from the rheumatism. The former inhabitants of this house, who had been content to live with the dunghill close to the window, and the green pool overflowing the kitchen, and the sharp wind blowing in through the broken panes, had in the course of a few years lost their health. The father of the family had been crippled by the rheumatism, two children died of the fever, and the mother had such an inflammation in her eyes that she could not see to work, spin, or do anything. Now the whole that was lost by the family sickness, the doctor’s bill, and the burying of the two children, all together, came in three years to nearly three times ten pounds. Therefore Mr. Gray was, if we only consider money, a very prudent man. What could he or any body do without health? Money is not the first thing to be thought of in this world; for there are many things that money cannot buy, and health is one of them. “Health can make money, but money cannot make health,” said our wise farmer. “And then, for the value of a few shillings, say pounds, we have light to see what we are doing, and shelves, and a press to hold our clothes in. Why now, this will be all so much saved to us, by and by; for the clothes will last the longer, and the things about us will not go to wreck; and when I and the boys can come home after our day’s work to a house like this, we may be content.”
Having thus ensured, as far as it was in his power, health, cleanliness, and comfort in his house, our hero and his sons turned their attention to the farm. They set about to repair all the fences; for the boys, though they were young, were able to help their father in the farm: they were willing to work, and happy to work with him. John, the eldest lad, could set potatoes, and Robin was able to hold the plough: so that Gray did not hire any servant-boy to help him; nor did Mrs. Gray hire a maid. “Rose and I,” said she, “can manage very well to look after the two cows, and milk them, and make the butter, and get something too by our spinning. We must do without servants, and may be happy and content to serve ourselves.”
“Times will grow better; that is, we shall make them better every year: we must have the roughest first,” said Gray.
The first year, to be sure, it was rough enough; and, do what they could, they could not do more than make the rent of the farm, which rent amounted to forty pounds. The landlord was a Mr. Hopkins, agent to a gentleman who resided in England. Mr. Hopkins insisted upon having the rent paid up to the day, and so it was. Gray contented himself by thinking that this was perhaps for the best. “When the rent is once paid,” said he, “it cannot be called for again, and I am in no man’s power; that’s a great comfort. To be sure, if the half year’s rent was left in my hands for a few months, it might have been of service: but it is better not to be under an obligation to such a man as Mr. Hopkins, who would make us pay for it in some shape or other, when we least expected it.”
Mr. Hopkins was what is called in Ireland a middle-man; one that takes land from great proprietors, to set it again at an advanced, and often an exorbitant, price, to the poor. Gray had his land at a fair rent, because it was not from Mr. Hopkins his father had taken the lease, but from the gentleman to whom this man was agent. Mr. Hopkins designed to buy the land which Gray farmed, and he therefore wished to make it appear as unprofitable as possible to his landlord, who, living in England, knew but little of his own estate. “If these Grays don’t pay the rent,” said he to his driver, “pound their cattle, and sell at the end of eight days. If they break and run away, I shall have the land clear, and may make a compliment of it to tenants and friends of my own, after it comes into my hands.” He was rather disappointed, when the rent was paid to the day. “But,” said he, “it won’t be so next year; the man is laying out his money on the ground, on draining and fencing, and that won’t pay suddenly. We’ll leave the rent in his hands for a year or so, and bring down an ejectment upon him, if he once gets into our power, as he surely will. Then, all that he has done to the house will be so much in my way. What a fool he was to lay out his money so!”
It happened, however, that the money which Gray had laid out in making his house comfortable and neat was of the greatest advantage to him, and at a time and in a way which he least expected. His cottage was within sight of the high road, that led to a town from which it was about a mile distant. A regiment of English arrived, to be quartered in the town; and the wives of some of the soldiers came a few hours after their husbands. One of these women, a sergeant’s wife, was taken suddenly in labour, before they reached the town; and the soldier who conducted the baggage-cart in which she was, drew up to the first amongst a row of miserable cabins that were by the road-side, to ask the people if they would give her lodging: but the sick woman was shocked at the sight of the smoke and dirt of this cabin, and begged to be carried on to the neat whitewashed cottage that she saw at a little distance. This was Gray’s house.
His wife received the stranger with the greatest kindness and hospitality; she was able to offer her a neat bed, and a room that was perfectly dry and clean. The sergeant’s wife was brought to bed soon after her arrival, and remained with Mrs. Gray till she recovered her strength. She was grateful for the kindness that was shown to her by Mrs. Gray; and so was her husband, the sergeant. He came one evening to the cottage, and in his blunt English fashion said, “Mr. Gray, you know I, or my wife, which is the same thing, have cause to be obliged to you, or your wife, which comes also to the same thing: now one good turn deserves another. Our colonel has ordered me, I being quarter-master, to sell off by auction some of the cast horses belonging to the regiment: now I have bought in the best for a trifle, and have brought him here, with me, to beg you’ll accept of him, by way some sort of a return for the civilities you and your wife, that being, as I said, the same thing, showed me and mine.”
Gray replied he was obliged to him for this offer of the horse, but that he could not think of accepting it; that he was very glad his wife had been able to show any kindness or hospitality to a stranger; but that, as they did not keep a public-house, they could not take any thing in the way of payment.
The sergeant was more and more pleased by farmer Gray’s generosity. “Well,” said he, “I heard, before I came to Ireland, that the Irish were the most hospitable people on the face of the earth; and so I find it come true, and I shall always say so, wherever I’m quartered hereafter. And now do pray answer me, is there any the least thing I can ever do to oblige you? for, if the truth must be told of me, I don’t like to lie. under an obligation, any more than another, where I can help it.”
“To show you that I do not want to lay you under one,” said Gray, “I’ll tell you how you can do as much for me, and ten times as much, as I have done for you; and this without hurting yourself or any of your employers a penny.”
“Say how, and it shall be done.”
“By letting me have the dung of the barracks, which will make my land and me rich, without making you poorer; for I’ll give you the fair price, whatever it is. I don’t ask you to wrong your employers of a farthing.”
The sergeant promised this should be done, and rejoiced that he had found some means of serving his friend. Gray covered ten acres with the manure brought from the barracks; and the next year these acres were in excellent heart. This was sufficient for the grazing of ten cows: he had three, and he bought seven more; and with what remained of his hundred pounds, after paying for the cows, he built a shed and a cow-house. His wife, and daughter Rose, who was now about fourteen, were excellent managers of the dairy. They made, by butter and butter-milk, about four pounds each cow within the year. The butter they salted and took to market, at the neighbouring town; the butter-milk they sold to the country people, who, according to the custom of the neighbourhood, came to the house for it. Besides this, they reared five calves, which, at a year old, they sold for fifteen guineas and a half. The dairy did not, however, employ all the time of this industrious mother and daughter; they had time for spinning, and by this cleared six guineas. They also made some little matter by poultry; but that was only during the first year: afterwards Mr. Hopkins sent notice that they must pay all the duty-fowl, and duty-geese, and turkeys, {Footnote: See a very curious anecdote in the Statistical Survey of the Queen’s County.} charged in the lease, or compound with him by paying two guineas a year. This gentleman had many methods of squeezing money out of poor tenants; and he was not inclined to spare the Grays, whose farm he now more than ever wished to possess, because its value had been considerably increased, by the judicious industry of the farmer and his sons.
Young as they were, both farmer Gray’s sons had a share in these improvements. The eldest had drained a small field, which used to be called the rushy field, from its having been quite covered with rushes. Now there was not a rush to be found upon it, and his father gave him the profits of the field, and said that it should be called by his name. Robin, the youngest son, had, by his father’s advice, tried a little experiment, which many of his neighbours ridiculed at first, and admired at last. The spring, which used to supply the duck-pond, that often flooded the house, was at the head of a meadow, that sloped with a fall sufficient to let the water run off. Robin flooded the meadow at the proper season of the year, and it produced afterwards a crop such as never had been seen there before. His father called this meadow Robin’s meadow, and gave him the value of the hay that was made upon it.
“Now, my dear boys,” said this good father, “you have made a few guineas for yourselves; and here are a few more for you, all that I can spare: let us see what you can do with this money. I shall take a pride in seeing you get forward by your own industry and cleverness; I don’t want you to slave for me all your best days; but shall always be ready, as a father should be, to give you a helping hand.”
The sons had scarcely a word in answer to this, for their hearts were full; but that night, when they were by themselves, one said to the other, “Brother, did you see Jack Reel’s letter to his father? They say he has sent home ten guineas to him. Is there any truth in it, think you?”
“Yes; I saw the letter, and a kinder never was written from son to father. {Footnote: This is fact.} The ten guineas I saw paid into the old man’s hand; and, at that same minute, I wished it was I that was doing the same by my own father.”
“That was just what I was thinking of, when I asked you if you saw the letter. Why, Jack Reel had nothing, when he went abroad with the army to Egypt, last year. Well, I never had a liking myself to follow the drum: but it’s almost enough to tempt one to it. If I thought I could send home ten guineas to my father, I would ‘list to-morrow.”
“That would not be well done of you, Robin,” said John; “for my father would rather have you, a great deal, than the ten guineas, I am sure: to say nothing of my poor mother, and Rose, and myself, who would be sorry enough to hear of your being knocked on the head, as is the fate, sooner or later, of them that follow the army. I would rather be any of the trades that hurt nobody, and do good to a many along with myself, as father said t’other day. Then, what a man makes so, he makes with a safe conscience, and he can enjoy it.”
“You are right, John, and I was wrong to talk of ‘listing,” said Robin; “but it was only Jack Reel’s letter, and the ten guineas sent to his father, that put it into my head. I may make as much for my father by staying at home, and minding my business. So now, good night to you; I’ll go to sleep, and we can talk more about it all to-morrow.”
The next morning, as these two youths were setting potatoes for the family, and considering to what they should turn their hands when the potatoes were all set, they were interrupted by a little gossoon, who came running up as hard as he could, crying, “Murder! murder! Simon O’Dougherty wants you. For the love of God, cross the bog in all haste, to help pull out his horse, that has tumbled into the old tan-pit, there beyond, in the night!”
The two brothers immediately followed the boy, carrying with them a rope and a halter, as they guessed that soft Simon would not have either. They found him wringing his hands beside the tan-pit, in which his horse lay smothering. A little ragged boy was tugging at the horse’s head, with a short bit of hay-rope. “Oh, murder! murder! What will I do for a halter? Sure the horse will be lost, for want of a halter; and where in the wide world will I look for one?” cried Simon, without stirring one inch from the spot. “Oh, the blessing of Heaven be with you, lads,” continued he, turning at the sight of the Grays; “you’ve brought us a halter. But see! it’s just over with the poor beast. All the world put together will not get him alive out of that. I must put up with the loss, and be content. He cost me fifteen good guineas, and he could leap better than any horse in the county. Oh, what a pity on him! what a pity! But, take it easy; that’s all we have for it! Poor cratur! Poor cratur!”
Without listening to Simon’s lamentations, the active lads, by the help of Simon and the two boys, pulled the horse out of the pit. The poor animal was nearly exhausted by struggling: but, after some time, he stretched himself, and, by degrees, recovered sufficiently to stand. One of his legs, however, was so much hurt that he could scarcely walk; and Simon said he would surely go lame for life.
“Who now would ever have thought of his straying into such an ugly place of all others?” continued he. “I know, for my share, the spot is so overgrown with grass and rubbish, of one kind or other, and it’s so long since any of the tanning business was going on here, in my uncle O’Haggarty’s time, that I quite forgot there were such things as tan-pits, or any manner of pits, in my possession; and I wish these had been far enough off before my own little famous Sir Hyacinth O’Brien had strayed into them, laming himself for life, like a blockhead. For the case was this: I came home late last night, not as sober as a judge, and, finding no one up but the girl, I gave her the horse to put into the stable, and she forgot the door after her, which wants a lock; and there being but a scanty feed of oats, owing to the boy’s negligence, and no halter to secure the beast, my poor Sir Hyacinth strayed out here, as ill luck would have it, into the tan-pit. Bad luck to my uncle O’Haggarty, that had the tan-yard here at all! He might have lived as became him, without dirtying his hands with the tanning of dirty hides.”
“I was just going,” said John Gray, “to comfort you, Simon, for the laming of your horse, by observing that, if you had your tan-yard in order again, you could soon make up the price of another horse.”
“Ohoo! I would not be bothered with anything of the kind. There’s the mill of Rosanna there, beyond, was the plague of my life, till it stopped; and I was glad to have fairly done with it. Them that come after me may set it a-going again, and welcome. I have enough just to serve my time, and am content any way.”
“But, if you could get a fair rent for the tan-yard, would you let it?” said John.
“To that I should make no objection in life; provided I had no trouble with it,” replied Simon.
“And if you could get somebody to keep the mill of Rosanna going, without giving you any trouble, you would not object to that, would you?” said Robin.
“Not I, to be sure,” replied Simon, laughing. “Whatever God sends, be it more or less, I am content. But I would not have you think me a fool, for all I talk so easy about the matter; I know very well what I might have got for the mill some years ago, when first it stopped, if I would have let it to the man that proposed for it; but though he was as substantial a tenant as you could see, yet he affronted me once, at the last election, by calling a freeholder of mine over the coals; and so I was proud of an opportunity to show him I did not forget. So I refused to let him the mill on any terms; and I made him a speech for his pride to digest at the same time. ‘Mr. Hopkins,’ said I, ‘the lands of Rosanna have been in my family these two hundred years and upwards; and though, now-a-days, many men think that every thing is to be done for money, and though you, Mr. Hopkins, have made as much money as most men could in the same time,—all which I don’t envy you,—yet I must make bold to tell you, that the lands of Rosanna, or any part or parcel thereof, is what you’ll never have whilst I’m alive, Mr. Hopkins, for love or money.’ The spirit of the O’Doughertys was up within me; and though all the world calls me easy Simon, I have my own share of proper spirit. These mushroom money-makers, that start up from the very dirt under one’s feet, I can’t for my part swallow them. Now I should be happy to give you a lease of the mill of Rosanna, after refusing Hopkins; for you and your father before you, lads, have been always very civil to me. My tan-pits and all I am ready to talk to you about, and thank you for pulling my horse out for me this morning. Will you walk up and look at the mill? I would attend you myself, but must go to the farrier about Sir Hyacinth’s leg, instead of standing talking here any longer. Good morning to you kindly. The girl will give you the key of the mill, and show you everything, the same as myself.”
Simon gathered his great coat about him, and walked away to the farrier, whilst the two brothers rejoiced that they should see the mill without hearing him talk the whole time. Simon, having nothing to do all day long but to talk, was an indefatigable gossip. When the lands of Rosanna were in question, or when his pride was touched, he was terribly fluent.