unaware of the step I had determined to take, and accordingly requested that a reply might be sent to Michael Nolan, Esq. For several weary weeks I trudged daily to the bakery, vainly hoping for an answer.
Having for some time felt the pinch of increasing poverty, I was keenly anxious to obtain some lucrative employment. One day I read an advertisement in the Freeman's Journal which seemed to offer an opening towards a competence. For the moderate sum of one shilling (which might be remitted in postage stamps if convenient to the sender) a plan for earning a liberal livelihood would be revealed. There was no room for any doubt; the thing was described as an absolute certainty. An easy, congenial, reputable employment, not requiring any special educational qualifications, why, the thing would have been cheap at hundreds of pounds. Yet here it was going begging for a shilling. In my case, however, the shilling was the great difficulty. My sole sources of pocket-money were the sale of holly-berries for Christmas festivities; florists used to send carts from Dublin and pay as much as three shillings per load and a royalty of a penny per head which I used to collect from rabbit snarers who worked with ferrets. But Christmas was far off, and rabbits were breeding, so my golden opportunity of acquiring an easy competence would probably be lost by delay.
My parents were unaccountably unsympathetic; they absolutely refused to provide the shilling. But a friend heard of my plight (not, however, from myself), and furnished the cash. He little knew the misery he was calling down on my unsophisticated head.
I posted the shilling's-worth of stamps to the specified address and awaited a reply in a fever of anticipation. Within a few days it arrived; we were sitting at breakfast when the letter was delivered. My heart swelled with joyous expectation. Now I would show my skeptical relations how wrong-headed they, had been in thwarting my legitimate ambitions towards making a start in life; now I was about to taste the sweets of independence.
The missive was bulky. As my trembling fingers tore open the envelope, a number of closely printed slips fell out. I read these, one by one, with a reeling brain. Then I laid my head on the table and burst into bitter tears. My stately castle of hope had tumbled to pieces, and I was buried beneath its ruins.
The circulars were signed by one "Harper Twelvetree"; the printed slips outlined a scheme for establishing a burial agency. I had to open an office at the nearest village and, when I heard of a death, direct the attention of the bereaved to one or other of the undertakers in the vicinity. For thus obtaining custom I was to claim a commission on the funeral expenses. This ghoulish suggestion was the sole outcome of my sanguine expectations.
It is hardly too much to say that this matter caused me deeper and more long-drawn-out misery than any other episode of a somewhat chequered career. I have dwelt on it at length because I think the relation reveals a moral. At that breakfast-table began a course of torture which lasted for several years. To say I was chaffed by everyone, from my father and mother down to old Larry Frane, an ex-soldier who occupied the lodge at our big gate, gives no idea of the true state of things. The ridicule was continuous, searching, and universal. I was the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. Anonymous letters from supposed persons in a moribund condition, offering to guarantee the delivery of their prospective remains in consideration of a small immediate advance, reached me from various quarters. If I went into a hayfield, one laborer would speak to another, somewhat in this fashion
"Jerry, have ye heerd that ould Biddy McGrath was prayed for on
Sunday?"
This would be accompanied by a meaning look at me. I would stalk off with apparent unconcern, seeking some place where I could fall unseen to the ground and weep. I was afraid to go to Mass at the little upland chapel at Glencullen. It is usual in Roman Catholic churches to pray for the welfare of departed souls and for the recovery of those people afflicted with sickness who are thought to be in danger. I used to imagine that the priest glanced meaningly at me when he made announcements on these subjects. This, of course, was nonsense, but several times I noticed members of the congregation looking at me and tittering.
I became solitary in my habits, for I dreaded meeting a human being. For a time my health suffered to a serious degree. My tribulations increased to such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. Where sensitive children are concerned, chaff may be useful in hardening them, but it should not be carried beyond a certain point.
CHAPTER II
Improved health—Jimmy Kinsella—Veld food—I abscond—Father Healy on conversion—Father O'Dwyer and his whip—Confession—Construction of a volcano—The Fenian outbreak—Departure for South Africa—The tuneful soldier—Chess at sea—Madeira A gale—The Asia
My health having improved in my eleventh year, I was able to extend the range of my walks abroad. The surrounding country was full of interest; the scenery was lovely. The region through which the boundary common to Wicklow and Dublin runs is full of beauty spots, and the deeper one penetrates into Wicklow, the more delightful is the landscape. The Dargle, Powerscourt Waterfall, Bray Head, and the Sugarloaf Mountains were all within rambling distance of Springfield. A few miles away, on the Dublin side, were various ruins full of rusting machinery. These had been the sites of paper and flax mills, shut down owing to England's fiscal policy of the early nineteenth century days. Lead-smelting and shot-making was carried on at a spot a few miles to the eastward. It was a great delight to see the melted metal poured through a sieve at the top of a tower and raining down into an excavation with water at the bottom. I remember the manager of the works once showing me an immense ingot of silver. It was lying on a table in his office between two flannel shirts, the edges of which were just able to meet over its sides. There was a small lake and a trout stream close to the works; of these I had the run.
Many spots in the neighborhood of Springfield had legends attached to them. I remember one large rock in the Scalp which was known as the "Soggarth's Stone." It was said that a priest had been killed there in "ninety-eight." At a spot where two roads crossed, on the way to Enniskerry, could still be traced the outlines of the graves of several suicides; one of these had the remains of a very old oaken stake sticking diagonally from it. Every storied spot fascinated me, but although many of my friends among the peasantry tried hard to make me believe in the fairies or, as they called them, "the good people," I never placed the slightest credence in what was said on the subject.
I had a faithful henchman in Jimmy Kinsella, a lad of about my own age, who belonged to Springfield. Jimmy was the only one of my circle of acquaintances who refrained from persecuting me concerning the "burial agency" episode. Should these lines ever meet his eye, he will know that I still cherish grateful memories of his chivalrous forbearance. But I fear poor Jimmy could never have learnt to read; he was one of a sorely poverty-stricken family of about a dozen children. His ordinary costume consisted of a very ragged coat and breeches, the latter not quite reaching to his knees, and usually held at their proper altitude by a "suggan," or rope of hay. Jimmy was the only well-fleshed member of his family, and for being thus distinguished he had me to thank.
I must, as a child, have had the forager's instinct very strongly developed, for I very early noted the amount of more or less appetizing food lying about ungleaned in what, in South Africa, we would call "the veld." For instance, there was a large grove of hazel-trees from which vast stores of nuts could be collected in the season. This nut-grove was still standing when I visited Springfield a few years ago. These nuts we used to gather and, like the squirrels, hoard in various places.
The seasons brought forth other acceptable items of food. Mushrooms grew plentifully in the grassy hollows near the lake, and wild strawberries were to be found on almost every southern slope. There was one
