Kitabı oku: «Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886», sayfa 4

Gerald Griffin

 
Leal heart, and brave right hand that never drew
One false note from thy harp, although the ache
Of weariness and hope deferred might shake
Harsh discords from a soul less clear and true
Than thine amid the gloom that knew no break—
The London gloom that barred the heaven's blue
From thy deep Celtic eyes, so wide to take
The bliss of earth and sky within their view!
On fleet, white wings thy music made its way
Back o'er the waves to Ireland's holy shore;
Close nestled in her bosom, each wild lay
Mixed with her sighs—'twas from her deep heart's core
She called thee: "'Gille Machree'⁷ come home, I pray—
In my green lap of shamrocks sleep, asthore!"
 

Rose Kavanagh, in Irish Monthly.

Mary E. Blake

Two years ago we concluded a slight notice of the poems of "Thomasine" (known in Ireland as Miss Olivia Knight, and in Australia as Mrs. Hope Connolly), with the following words: "A writer in the Irish Fireside said lately that Eva and Speranza had no successors. We could name, if we dared, three or four daughters of Erin whom we believe to be singing now from a truer and deeper inspiration and with a purer utterance." Happily, since these words were printed, two of these unnamed rivals whom we set up against the gifted wife of the new M. P. elect for Meath, and against the more gifted widow of Sir William Wilde, have placed their names on the title pages of collections of their poems. We allude, of course, to Katharine Tynan and Rosa Mulholland. Not only these whose place in literature is already secured, but higher than some to whom the enthusiasm of a political crisis gave prominence, we should be inclined to rank such Irish songstresses as the late Attie O'Brien and the living but too silent "Alice Esmonde." And then of Irishwomen living outside Ireland we have Fanny Parnell, Fanny Forrester, Eleanor C. Donnelly, and the lady whom we claim as our own in the title of this paper—Mrs. Mary E. Blake. Though the wife of a physician at Boston, she was born at Clonmel, and bore the more exclusively Celtic name of Magrath.⁸[Pg 140]

Boston claims, or used to claim, to be the literary metropolis of the United States. A prose volume by Mrs. Blake and a volume of her poems lie before us, and for elegance of typography do credit to their Boston publishers. "On the Wing"—lively sketches of a trip to the Pacific, all about San Francisco and the Yosemite Valley, and Los Angeles, and Colorado, but ending with this affectionate description of Boston aforesaid:

And now, as the evening sun drops lower, what fair city is this that rises in the east, throned like a queen above the silver Charles, many-towered and pinnacled, with clustering roof and taper spire? How proud she looks, yet modest, as one too sure of her innate nobility to need adventitious aid to impress others. Look at the æsthetic simplicity of her pose on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness of her children has left of the three mountains which were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that stretch by bridge and road, radiating her lavish favors in every direction; look at the spreading suburbs that crowd beyond her gates, more beautiful than the parks and pleasure grounds of her less favored sisters. See where she sits, small but precious, her pretty feet in the blue waters that love to dally about them; her pretty head, in its brave gilt cap, as near the clouds as she could manage to get it: her arms full of whatever is rarest and dearest and best. For doesn't she hold the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" and Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall, and Harvard College? Do not the fiery eloquence of Phillips, the songs of Longfellow, the philosophy of Fisk, the glory of the Great Organ, and the native lair of culture, belong to her? Ah! why should we not "tell truth and shame the devil"—doesn't she bring us to the babies and the family doctor?

But it is not as a writer of prose that Mrs. Blake has secured a niche in our gallery of literary portraits. Indeed, without knowing it, we have already introduced her poetry to our readers: for we are pleased to find in her volume of collected poems an anonymous piece which we had gathered as one of our "Flowers for a Child's Grave," from a number of The Boston Pilot as far back as 1870. We should reprint page 171 of this volume if it were not already found in our eighth volume (1880) at page 608. The division of Mrs. Blake's poems to which it belongs contains, we think, her best work. Her muse never sings more sweetly than in giving expression to the joy and grief of a mother's heart. The verses just referred to were the utterances of maternal grief: a mother's joy breaks out into these pleasant and musical stanzas:—

 
My little man is merry and wise,
Gay as a cricket and blithe as a bird;
Often he laughs and seldom he cries,
Chatters and coos at my lightest word:
Peeping and creeping and opening the door,
Clattering, pattering over the floor,
In and out, round about, fast as he can,—
So goes the daytime with my little man.
 
 
My little man is brimful of fun,
Always in mischief and sometimes in grief;
Thimble and scissors he hides one by one,
Till nothing is left but to catch the thief;
Sunny hair, golden fair over his brow—
Eyes so deep, lost in sleep, look at him now;
Baby feet, dimpled sweet, tired as they ran,
So goes the night-time with my little man.
 
 
My little man, with cherry-ripe face,
Pouting red lips and dimpled chin,
Fashioned in babyhood's exquisite grace,
Beauty without and beauty within,—
Full of light, golden bright, life as it seems,
Not a tear, not a fear, known in thy dreams;
Kisses and blisses now make up its span,
Could it be always so, my little man?
 
 
My little man the years fly away,
Chances and changes may come to us all,—
I'll look for the babe at my side some day,
And find him above me, six feet tall;
Flowing beard hiding the dimples I love,
Grizzled locks shading the clear brow above,
Youth's promise ripened on Nature's broad plan,
And nothing more left me of my little man.
 
 
My little man,—when time shall bow,
With its hoary weight, my head and thine,—
Will you love me then as you love me now,
With sweet eyes looking so fond in mine?
However strangely my lot may be cast,
My hope in life's future, my joy in life's past,
Loyal and true as your loving heart can,
Say, will you always be my little man?
 
 
My little man! perchance the bloom
Of the hidden years, as they come and pass,
May leave me alone, with a wee, wee tomb
Hidden away in the tangled grass.
Still as on earth, so in heaven above,
Near to me, dear to me, claiming my love,
Safe in God's sunshine, and filling his plan,
Still be forever my own little man.
 

Perhaps our Irish poetess in exile—Boston does not consider itself a place of exile—would prefer to be represented by one of her more serious poems; and probably she had good reasons for placing first in her volume the following which is called "The Master's Hand."

 
The scroll was old and gray;
The dust of time had gathered white and chill
Above the touches of the worker's skill,
And hid their charm away.
 
 
The many passed it by;
For no sweet curve of dainty face or form,
No gleam of light, or flash of color warm,
Held back the careless eye.
 
 
But when the artist came,
With eye that saw beyond the charm of sense,
He seemed to catch a sense of power intense
That filled the dusky frame.
 
 
And when with jealous care
His hand had cleansed the canvas, line by line,
Behold! The fire of perfect art divine,
Had burned its impress there!
 
 
Upon the tablet glowed,
Made priceless by the arch of time they spanned,
The touches of the rare Old Master's hand,
The life his skill bestowed.
 

 
O God whom we adore!
Give us the watchful sight, to see and trace,
Thy living semblance in each human face
However clouded o'er.
 
 
Give us the power to find,
However warped and grimmed by time and sin,
Thine impress stamped upon the soul within,
Thy signet on the mind.
 
 
Not ours the reckless speed
To proudly pass our brother's weakness by,
And turning from his side with careless eye,
To take no further heed.
 
 
But, studying line by line,
Grant to our hearts deep trust and patient skill,
To trace within his soul and spirit still,
Thy Master Hand divine!
 

Mrs. Blake in one point does not resemble the two Irish woman-poets—for they are more than poetesses—whom we named together at the beginning of this little paper. Ireland and the Blessed Virgin have not in this Boston book the prominence which Miss Mulholland gives them in the volume which is just issuing from Paternoster Square. The Irish-American lady made her selection with a view to the tastes of the general public; but the general public are sure to be won by earnest and truthful feeling, and an Irish and Catholic heart cannot be truthful and earnest without betraying its devotion to the Madonna and Erin.

Irish Monthly, edited by Rev. Mathew Russell, S.J.

George Washington

HIS CELEBRATED WHITE MULE, AND THE RACE IT MADE AWAY FROM A DEER RIFLE

Washington has generally been credited with the introduction in America of mules as a valuable adjunct to plantation appurtenances; but very few people know that one of his favorite riding animals was a white mule, which was kept carefully stabled and groomed along with his blooded horses at Mount Vernon. In the year 1797, there was published at Alexandria for a brief period, a weekly paper called Hopkin's Gazette. A few numbers of this sheet are still extant. In one of them there is an account of an exciting adventure, in which Washington, the white mule, and one Jared Dixon figured. It is evident that the editor of this paper did not have an exalted opinion of the great patriot, as he speaks of him as "a man who has the conceit of believing that there would not be any such country as America if there had not been a George Washington to prevent its annihilation." From this account it appears that Jared Dixon was a Welshman, who lived on a hundred-acre tract of land adjoining the Mount Vernon plantation. Washington always claimed that the tract belonged to him, and made several efforts to dispossess Dixon, but without success. According to the Gazette, Washington's overseer had, on one occasion, torn down the Dixon fence and let the cattle into the field, and various similar annoyances were resorted to in order to force Dixon to move away. But Dixon would neither surrender nor compromise, and kept on cultivating his little farm in defiance of the man who had been first in war and was now first in peace.

"It was last Thursday about the hour of noon," says the Gazette, "when General Washington rode up to Mr. Dixon's gate. He was mounted on his white mule, which had come down the broad road on his famous fox-trot of eight miles an hour. There was fire in the General's eye and his under lip protruded far, betokening war. His riding-boots shone in the sun, as did his gold spurs. His hair was tied with a gorgeous black ribbon, and his face was pale with resolution. Mr. Dixon and his family were adjusting themselves for dinner, when they heard the call at the gate. There was a most animated conversation between these two neighbors, in which the General informed the humble settler that he must receive a certain sum for his disputed title or submit to be dispossessed. Whereupon Mr. Dixon, who was also a Revolutionary soldier, and felt that he has some rights in this country, informed the lordly neighbor that the land was his own, that he had paid for it and built houses thereon, the children were born to him on it, and that he would defend it with his life. Continuing, he charged the general with inciting his employés to depredate on the fences and fields. It was natural that this should arouse the mettle of the modern Mars. He flew into a towering rage, and applied many epithets to Mr. Dixon that are not warranted by the Ten Commandments. He even went so far as to raise his riding-whip and to threaten personal violence. Mr. Dixon is a man of few words, but a high temper, and, not caring to have his home and family thus offended, he gave the general one minute to move away while he rushed into his house for his deer rifle. There are none who doubt the valor of the general; but there may be a few who do not credit him with that discretion which is so valuable a part of valor. Suffice it for the ends of this chronicle to say that it required only a few moments for him to turn the gray mule's head towards Mount Vernon, and, in less time than it takes to here relate, the noble animal was distancing the Dixon homestead with gallant speed. It was no fox-trot, nor yet so fast as the Derby record, but most excellent for a mule. At any rate, it was a noble race, which saved a settler's shot and a patriot's bacon, and averted a possible catastrophe that might have cast a gloom on American history."

If this narrative is strictly accurate, Washington might have replied to his refractory neighbor, on being warned away, in the language of the Nevada desperado who was put on a mule by a committee of vigilants and given ten minutes to get out of town; "Gentlemen," said the desperado, "if this mule don't balk, I don't want but five."

Washington's Mother

Mrs. Washington found little difficulty in bringing up her children. They were disciplined to obedience, and a simple word was her command. She was not given to any display of petulance or rage, but was steady, well-balanced, and unvarying in her mood. That she was dignified, even to stateliness, is shown us by the statement made by Lawrence Washington, of Chotauk, a relative and playmate of George in boyhood, who was often a guest at her house. He says—"I was often there with George—his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed truly kind. I have often been present with her sons—proper tall fellows, too—and we were all as mute as mice; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grandparent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner, so characteristic in the father of his country, will remember the matron as she appeared, when the presiding genius of her well-ordered household, commanding and being obeyed.

A Child of Mary

An old general was once asked by a friend how it was that, after so many years spent in the camp, he had come to be so frequent a communicant, receiving several times a week. "My friend," answered the old soldier, "the strangest part of it is, that my change of life was brought about before I ever listened to the word of a priest, and before I had set my foot in a church. After my campaigns, God bestowed on me a pious wife, whose faith I respected, though I did not share it. Before I married her she was a member of all the pious confraternities of her parish, and she never failed to add to her signature, Child of Mary. She never took it upon herself to lecture me about God, but I could read her thoughts in her countenance. When she prayed, every morning and night, her countenance beamed with faith and charity; when she returned from the church, where she had received, with a calmness, a sweetness and a patience, which had in them something of the serenity of heaven, she seemed an angel. When she dressed my wounds I found her like a Sister of Charity.

"Suddenly, I myself was taken with the desire to love the God whom my wife loved so well, and who inspired her with those virtues which formed the joy of my life. One day I, who hitherto was without faith, who was such a complete stranger to the practices of religion, so far from the Sacraments, said to her: 'Take me to your confessor.'

"Through the ministry of this man of God, and by the divine grace, I have become what I am, and what I rejoice to be."

Dead Man's Island

THE STORY OF AN IRISH COUNTRY TOWN.
T. P. O'Connor, M. P

CHAPTER XIX.
MAT BECOMES A FENIAN

Shortly before this, the Widow Cunningham had received the news that her poor boy had been killed in a colliery accident in Pennsylvania. This stopped the allowance which he used to send her out of his own scant wages.

The destruction of her daughter now came as the last blow that broke her long-enduring spirit. There had been a time when she would have died rather than have gone into the workhouse, but she had nothing left to live for now, and she became a pauper. The Irish workhouse soon kills what little spirit successive misfortunes have left in its occupants before their entrance, and in a few years there was nothing left of the once proud, high-spirited and splendid woman, whom we knew in the early days of this history.

Meantime, the fate of the girl had been the final influence in deciding the fate of another person. Mat Blake had fluctuated for a long time before he could make up his mind to join the revolutionary party; but on the very evening of the day on which he had seen Betty in the streets of Ballybay he made no further resistance, and that night was sworn in as a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

It is not my purpose in this story to enter at length into his adventures in his new and perilous enterprise. He had not been long in the ranks when he was recognized by Mr. James Stephens as one of the most promising members of the conspiracy, and he was chosen to do important and serious work. The funds of the organization were nearly always at the lowest ebb, and during this period of his life Mat had to pass through privations that could only be endured by a man of passionate purpose and unselfish aims. Many and many a time he had not the money wherewith to buy a railway ticket. His clothes were often ragged, and he frequently had to walk twenty miles in a day in shoes that were almost soleless. The arrangement usually was for the members of one circle to supply him with the money that would take him to the next town; and though he saw many instances of abject cowardice and hideous selfishness at this period—especially when the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act left the liberty, and to some extent, the life of every man at the disposal of the police. He also witnessed many proofs of heroic courage and noble devotion.

At length the time came when everybody expected the blow to be struck at British tyranny, and the star of Irish liberty to arise. Mat, owing to his fiery and impatient temperament, naturally belonged to that section of the Fenian Brotherhood which demanded prompt action, and still in the age of illusions and of blinding rage, he would admit no difficulties, and feared no obstacles. Mat had sworn in hundreds of members. He had passed through the town of Ballybay on the memorable night when an Irish regiment, as it was leaving for other quarters, cheered through the town for the Irish Republic, and some of the men on whom he relied most strongly were in high authority in the police force. He knew nothing of the almost total want of arms, taking it for granted that all the wild boasts of the supplies from America and other sources were founded on facts. He was one of the deputation that finally waited upon the leaders in Dublin to hurry on the struggle.

He went down to Ballybay on the night of the 17th of March, 18—, which had been fixed for the rising. The head centre of the province had arranged to meet the men there that night with arms. The Ballybay Barracks were to be surrendered to them through one of the sergeants who belonged to the Brotherhood; and it was hoped that by the evening of the next day, the green flag would float over the castle which for three centuries had been garrisoned by the soldiers of the enemy.

Two hundred men met at the trysting place, close to the "Big Meadows." They were kept waiting for some time; impatience began to set in, and demoralization is the child of impatience. At last the head centre appeared; he had five guns for the whole party. Then the men saw that their hopes were betrayed. Most of them quietly dispersed towards their homes. That night Mat was seized in his bed, and within a few minutes afterwards was in goal. He felt that the game was up, that all his bright hopes, like those of many another noble Irish heart before him, had ended in farcical nothingness. Disaster followed upon disaster. When he made his appearance in court he saw upon the witness table one of his most trusted friends, who was about to give the evidence that would ensure his conviction.

A final outrage was in store for him. The Government had resolved, when once it had entered upon the campaign against the conspiracy, to pursue it with vigor, and judges were selected who might be relied upon to show the accused no justice during the trial, and no mercy after the conviction. Crowe, who had been made a judge shortly after his last election for Ballybay, was naturally chosen as the chief and most useful actor in this drama. During all the years that had elapsed since his treason he had distinguished himself, even above all the other judges of the country, in the unscrupulous violence of his hostility to all popular movements. Trial before him came to be regarded as certainty of conviction. The fearlessness of the man made him inaccessible to the threats that were everywhere hurled against him, and his rage became the fiercer and his violence the more relentless on the day after he found a threatening letter under a plate on his own table. He brought to his task all the ferocity of the apostate. Under all his apparent independence, his quick vanity and his hot temper made him sensitive to attack, and the Fenian Press had made him the chief target of its most vehement and most constant invective.

Mat Blake was known as one of the bitterest writers and speakers of the movement, and some of the writings in which he had attacked Crowe displayed a familiarity with the incidents of Ballybay elections which could only have come from the pen of one who had been intimately associated with those struggles.

The two men now stood face to face—the one on the bench and the other in the dock. Crowe did not allow himself to betray any sign of previous acquaintance with the prisoner before him. The jury was selected; every man who might be supposed to have the least sympathy with National movements was rigorously excluded from the box, and Mat was tried by twelve men, of whom nine were Orangemen and the other three belonged to that Catholic-Whig bourgeoisie against which he had always waged unsparing war. Anthony Cosgrave was the foreman. Mat was convicted, and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

The sufferings he underwent during this period I will not attempt to describe. After a very short stay in Ireland he was transferred to Portland, and there the English warders exhausted upon him all the insolence and cruelty of ignorant and triumphant enemies. One suffering, however, was in his case somewhat mitigated. He had not a large appetite, and the prison food, though coarse, was sufficient for his wants. With the generosity which characterized him, he was even ready to divide his food with those whose appetites were more exacting. Among his companions were two men, tall, robust, red-haired, who belonged to a stock of Southern farmers, and who were possessed of the gigantic strength, the huge frame, and the sound digestion of Cork ploughmen. Every day these hapless creatures complained of hunger and of cold, and Mat and Charles Reilly, another member of the Irish People staff, sometimes found a sombre pleasure in finding and gathering snails for them. Whenever either of them brought a snail to Meehan or to Sheil the famished men would swallow it eagerly, without even stopping to take off the shell. Meehan is now a prominent member of the Dynamite Party in New York. Sheil became insane shortly after his release, and threw himself into the Liffey.

One day, after four years' imprisonment, the Governor called Mat into his room and told him that he was free. He was transferred to Milbank, then he was supplied with a suit of clothes several times too large for him, and he went out and by the Thames, and gazed on that noble stream with the eyes of a free man.

He wandered aimlessly and listlessly along, unable yet to appreciate the full joy of his restoration to liberty. As he was passing over Westminster Bridge he was suddenly stopped by a man whom he had known in the ranks of the organization, and whom the fortune of war had not swept into gaol with the rest. The stranger looked at Mat for a few moments; gazed on the hollow eyes, the pale cheeks, and the worn frame, and, unable to restrain his emotions, burst into tears. This was the first indication Mat received of the terrible change that imprisonment had wrought in his appearance. The next day he set out for Ballybay.

Meanwhile, vast changes seemed about to come over Ireland. The Fenian conspiracy had been the death-knell of the triumphant cynicism and corruption that had reigned over the country in the years succeeding the treason of Crowe. The name of Mr. Butt, as the leader of a new movement, was beginning to be spoken of. An agitation had been started which demanded a radical settlement of the land question. Demonstrations were taking place in almost every county, and the people were united, enthusiastic, and hopeful. Several of the worst of the landlords had already been brought to their knees, and there had been a considerable fall in the value of landed property. The serfs were passing from the extremity of despair and demoralization into the other extreme of exultant and sometimes cruel triumph.

Even the town of Ballybay was beginning to be stirred, and the farmers all around joined the new organization in large numbers.

By a curious coincidence a monster demonstration was announced in Ballybay for the very day of Mat's arrival.

As Mat passed along the too well remembered scene between Ballybay and Dublin, he could not help thinking of the time when he had gone over this road on his first visit to Ireland after his departure for England. He had then thought that desolation had reached its ultimate point; but in the intervening period the signs of decay had increased. It appeared as if for every ruin that had stared him in the face on the former occasion ten now appeared. For miles and miles he caught sight of not one house, of no human face; he seemed almost to be travelling through a city of the dead.

As the newspaper containing tidings of the new movement lay before him, he leaned back in reflection, and once more thought of the days in which Crowe figured as the saviour, and then as the betrayer of Ireland. It had been a rigid article of faith with the Fenian organization that no confidence was to be placed in constitutional agitations and agitators. Mat retained in their full fervor the doctrines he had held for years upon this point; and he turned away from the accounts of the new movement as from another chapter in national folly and prospective treason. Looking out on the familiar grey and dull sky, he could see no hope whatever for the future of his country. Irish life appeared to him one vast mistake; and so far as he had any plans for the future they were of a life removed from the chaos and fret and toil and moil and disappointments and humbug of politics. He thought of returning once more to his profession; but he resolved that it would be neither amid the incessant decay of Ireland, nor surrounded by hostile faces and unsympathetic hearts in England. His thoughts were of the mighty country which had extended its hospitality and generosity to so many of his race, and had bestowed upon them liberty, prosperity, and eminence. In all these visions one figure, one sweet face mingled itself. With Mary Flaherty by his side he felt that no career could be wholly dark, no part of the world wholly foreign, and as he once more indulged in waking dreams he hummed to himself the well-known air,—

 
"Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,
Still wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me."
 

At last he was at the railway, and there were his poor old father and his mother standing before him, their hair bleached to whiteness, trembling, feeble, with tears rolling down their cheeks. Mat was in his mother's arms in a moment.

Ballybay, even on this occasion, was true to itself. The arrival of Mat in Dublin had been announced in the newspapers, and the heart of the people throughout the country went forth to him, as it always does to those whose generous rashness has been punished by England's worst tyranny. He had been accompanied to the railway station at the Broadstone by a crowd; thousands cheered him, and shook him by the hand, and wept and laughed. The word had mysteriously gone along the line that the patriot was returning, and at every one of the stations, however small, there was a multitude to greet him warmly.

But at Ballybay, still deep down in the slough of its eternal despond, a few lorn and desolate-looking men stood on the platform. There they were once more, as if it were but yesterday, with their hands deep down in their pockets; the wistful, curious glance in their eyes, and the melancholy slouch in their shoulders. They tried to raise a cheer, but the attempt died in its own sickliness.

And then Mat left the train, walked over the station as one in a dream, and was placed upon the sidecar almost without knowing what he was doing.

There was a terrible dread at his heart; he asked his mother a question; she answered him; and then, and for the first time since he had left prison, his heart burst, his spirit broke, and he entered his father's house pallid, trembling, his eyes suffused with bitter tears.