IN a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day’s forced march from Rathmines,—which, as every tourist in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of the Hibernian metropolis,—there boarded, lodged, and sent out his washing last Christmas an æsthetic and highly “cul-chawed” young gentleman who had come all the way from London to take up a position in that branch of the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four hours a day whatever filthy Irish lucre may be presented in the shape of income. To spare the harrowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, Frederick. In the clammy tomb of the miserable past I shall bury the remainder of his official signature.
Fred came, he saw, but he didn’t conquer, for alas! while he saw he was also seen, and his personal charms were not of a nature to strike his landlady’s daughter, a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling Irish maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul desired. But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune had smiled upon Fred with a quarter’s salary, and he determined to add such embellishments to his face and form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a less susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom of Norah Flaherty. He would pave the way by a Christmas present. He had a work-box. He would fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would varnish it. Hamilton & Long, of Grafton Street, sold a celebrated composition warranted to change the plainest deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the boudoir of a countess.
He left home to secure that miraculous compound. He secured it. Having time on hand, he resolved to devote it to the adornment of his person. He dropped into a barber’s temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the British Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent shave without being subjected by him to eloquent seductions to purchase three or four dollars’ worth of hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and face powders. Frederick’s barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. He had barely got his devastating scissors ready for action on our hero’s cranium before he ventured to suggest that Fred’s hair was not—well, not quite a fashionable color. As the locks in question were of the decidedly martial color usually associated with the uniform of the English line or the—hem—nether garments of the French infantry, Frederick assented.
“You should try our hair-dye, Balsam of Peru,” said the tonsorial artist. “It will make your hair as black as the hob of—I mean as the raven’s wing.”
Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with thanks, when he thought of Norah, pretty little Norah, and in a fatal moment he invested in the dye.
“Your mustache ain’t quite a miracle,” suggested the knight of the scissors.
It wasn’t quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapidated, disjointed sort of a mustache—what there was of it. It grew in stray patches and odd hairs, with five minutes’ desert intervals for reflection between the stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully indorsed the coiffeur’s opinion.
“Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on a billiard ball or a beard on a foundation stone with a single application. Only a shilling.”
A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick’s pocket.
“Those hairs on your nose don’t remarkably add to the striking beauty of your classic features,” once more insinuated the demon of the lather-pot.
They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed with his evil genius.
“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”
Alas! He took the Depilatory.
“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the curling-tongs.
No, he wasn’t.
“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day. Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”
Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming monotonous. However, he admitted that the speculator who bought his teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a fortune by the investment.
“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap. Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”
Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every now and then en route, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai, he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the domestic doorstep, replied emphatically, “I should rather think so!” upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.
When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.
At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning sob of fate, the candle went out!
For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides, he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his with envy and chagrin?
He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not? He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber—to dream he had Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.
. . . . . . . . .
Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer—that last toddy, no doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache. Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s, and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads, chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in wild and dripping confusion.
That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his nose—cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”
It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of a walnut escritoire.
Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is now another’s.
SANDY ROW, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles, the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To h—with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its consecrated—whiskey consecrated—shore, that Papist foot would be carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of the desecrated pavement.
In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one Green—Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors, but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.
In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes, banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons, blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National League invaders.
For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.
During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’ duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses, and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings; and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through, ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.
From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.
The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard. They were adopted.
Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order—each man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander—a kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously maddening marauders!
Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass, rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.
Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.
The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.
Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.
Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?
About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.
Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly perfected.
It was dark,—so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.
Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation, and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting, paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.
Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas, like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.
The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with pickaxes and shovels.
Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111 forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with the contents of a tinker’s budget—why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s all. They have one motto he appreciates:—
That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L. 1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:—