Kitabı oku: «Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886», sayfa 8
Te Deum
The course of the general election has surpassed the most sanguine expectations of the Irish leader. Our success has been such as might well take our breath away with joy. The Irish race at home and in the stranger's land have risen to the height of the great crisis with a unity and soldier-like discipline absolutely unparalleled in the world's history, and their magnificent enthusiasm has swept all before it. Three grand results may already be chalked up, and they involve triumphs that a few years ago would have been deemed the ideal of crazy dreamers. The Nominal Home Rulers are effaced to a man. The once proud Irish Whig party, who for a quarter of a century held undisputed sway over the Irish representation, is literally annihilated. If Mr. Dickson should be a solitary survivor, he will survive not as a living force in Irish politics, but as the one bleak and woe-begone specimen now extant of a race of politicians who once swarmed over four-fifths of the constituencies of this island. The third great achievement of the election campaign, and the mightiest of all, is that the Irish vote in England has been proved to demonstration to be able to trim and balance English parties to its liking, and consequently to make the Irish vote in Ireland the supreme power in the English legislature. It is impossible to over-estimate the magnitude of these results. The causes of joy are absolutely bewildering in number. A few years ago, the National voice in Ireland was heard only as a faint, distant murmur at Westminster. It could only rumble under ground in Ireland, and every outward symptom of Irish disaffection could be suppressed with the iron hand without causing one quiver of uneasiness at Westminster, much less shaking Ministries and revolutionizing parties. Even at home Nationalism was a shunned creed. It was not respectable. The few exponents it occasionally sent to Parliament were regarded as oddities. The mass of the Irish representation were as thoroughly English party-men as if they were returned from Yorkshire. To-day what an enchanted transformation scene!
A month since Mr. Parnell's party was but a fraction of the Irish representation. The Irish Whigs and Nominal Home Rulers combined outnumbered them, without counting the solid phalanx of Ulster Tories. Where are the three opposing factions to-day? The Nominal Home Rulers have died off without a groan. The Northern Whigs have committed suicide by one of the most infatuated strokes of folly ever recorded in political annals. The Tories have shrunk within the borders of one out of thirty-two counties in Ireland, with precarious outposts in three others; and they are beside themselves with exultation because they have managed to save Derry and Belfast themselves by a neck from the jaws of all-devouring Nationalism. Nor is the seizing possession of seven-eighths of the Irish representation the only or even the greatest fact of the day. The Nationalists have not only won, but over four-fifths of the country they have reduced their opponents to a laughing-stock in the tiny minorities in which the Loyal and Patriotic Union have obligingly exhibited them. The overwhelming character of the Nationalist victory would not have been a tithe so impressive had not our malignant enemies insisted upon coming out in the daylight in review order, and displaying their pigmy insignificance to a wondering world. A string of uncontested elections would have passed off monotonously unimaginatively. It would have been said the country was simply dumb and tame and terrorized. But the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union have guarded us against any mistake of that sort. They valiantly spent their fifty thousand pounds in challenging the verdict of the country, and the country is answering in thunder-tones that will reverberate to the most distant times. Uncontested elections in Dublin City, for example, would have attracted but little notice. It was known that the Nationalists were in overwhelming strength on the register; but the croakers of the Scotch Times and Express might still have exercised their imagination in bragging what wonders the loyalists might have performed, if they thought it worth while. But the Loyal and Patriotic Union heroically determined that national spirit in Dublin should not be allowed merely to smoulder for want of fuel. They determined to brand their faction with impotence in eternal black and white. They delivered their challenge with the insolence and malignity of their progenitors of the Penal Days, and the result was such a tornado of national feeling as never shook the Irish capital before; a tornado before which the pigmies who raised it are shivering in affright. Magnificent as are the results in Ireland, however, our countrymen in England have achieved the real marvels of the campaign. They have brought the towering Liberal majority tumbling like a house of cards. They have in fifty-five constituencies set up or knocked down English candidates like ninepins. With the one unhappy exception of Glasgow, where tenderness for a Scotch radical gave a seat to Mr. Mitchel-Henry, the superb discipline of the Irish electorate has extorted the homage as well as the consternation of English party managers. They have made Mr. Parnell as supreme between rival English parties as the Irish constituencies have effaced the Whig and Nominal factions who disputed his supremacy. Ten thousand times, well done, ye brave and faithful Irish exiles. On the day of Ireland's liberation you will deserve to rank high in the glorious roll of her deliverers.
United Ireland, Dublin.
Eighty-Six to Eighteen.—This is the way the Irish representation now stands, eighty-six men in favor of making Ireland a nation, eighteen wanting to keep her a province, and a province on which they can selfishly batten. The elections in every way have borne out the forecast of the Irish leaders, who calculated eighty-five as the minimum strength of the National party. Mr. Gladstone will now be gratified to learn that in response to his late Midlothian addresses, this nation has spoken out in a manner which cannot be falsified or gainsaid, demanding the restoration of its stolen Parliament. The loyalists, with all the power of England at their back, and money galore at their command, can point to only one whole county out of the thirty-two which has remained solid for the Union. Antrim alone sends up a solid Tory representation, and with it the only vestige that is left of the "Imperial Province" is some fragments of Down, Derry and Armagh—in all of which the Nationalists also have won a seat. On the other hand, in four Northern counties—Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh and Donegal, the loyalists have not carried a single division, and won only one out of four in Tyrone. How much more "unity" do the English want? The excuse hitherto has been that Home Rule could not be granted because Ireland was itself divided on the subject; but even that wretched pretence is now forever at an end, for almost since the dawn of history no such practical unanimity was ever shown by any nation.
Rapidity of Time's Flight
Swiftly glide the years of our lives. They follow each other like the waves of the ocean. Memory calls up the persons we once knew—the scenes in which we were once actors. They appear before the mind like the phantoms of a night vision. Behold the boy rejoicing in the gayety of his soul. The wheels of Time cannot move too rapidly for him. The light of hope dances in his eyes; the smile of expectation plays with his lips. He looks forward to long years of joy to come; his spirit burns within him when he hears of great men and mighty deeds; he longs to mount the hill of ambition, to tread the path of honor, to hear the shouts of applause. Look at him again. He is now in the meridian of life; care has stamped its wrinkles upon his brow; disappointment has dimmed the lustre of his eye; sorrow has thrown its gloom upon his countenance. He looks backward upon the waking dreams of his youth, and sighs for their futility. Each revolving year seems to diminish something from his little stock of happiness, and discovers that the season of youth, when the pulse of anticipation beats high, is the only season of enjoyment. Who is he of aged locks? His form is bent and totters, his footsteps move but rapidly toward the tomb. He looks back upon the past; his days appear to have been few; the magnificence of the great is to him vanity; the hilarity of youth, folly; he considers how soon the gloom of death must overshadow the one and disappoint the other. The world presents little to attract and nothing to delight him. A few more years of infirmity, inanity and pain must consign him to idiocy or the grave. Yet this was the gay, the generous, the high-souled boy who beheld the ascending path of life strewn with flowers without a thorn. Such is human life; but such cannot be the ultimate destinies of man.
The best education in the world is that got by struggling for a living.—Wendell Phillips.
Juvenile Department
CHOOSING OCCUPATIONS
Five little girls sat down to talk one day beside the brook.
Miss Lizzie said when she grew up she meant to write a book;
And then the others had to laugh, till tears were in their eyes,
To think of Lizzie's writing books, and see her look so wise.
Miss Lucy said she always thought she'd like to teach a school,
And make the horrid, ugly boys obey her strictest rule.
Miss Minnie said she'd keep a shop where all the rest must buy,
And they agreed to patronize, if "prices weren't too high."
Miss Ada said she'd marry rich, and wear a diamond ring,
And give a party every night, "and never do a thing!"
But Nellie, youngest of them all, shook out each tumbled curl,
And said she'd always stay at home, and be her mother's girl.
A CHILD AND A WASP
Among the passengers on a train going West, was a very much over-dressed woman, accompanied by a bright-looking Irish nurse girl, who had charge of a self-willed, tyrannical two-year-old boy, of whom the over-dressed woman was plainly the mother. The mother occupied a seat by herself. The nurse and child were in a seat immediately in front of her. The child gave frequent exhibitions of temper, and kept the car filled with such vicious yells and shrieks, that there was a general feeling of savage indignation among the passengers. Although he time and again spat in his nurse's face, scratched her hands until the blood came, and tore at her hair and bonnet, she bore with him patiently. The indignation of the passengers was made the greater because the child's mother made no effort to correct or quiet him, but, on the contrary, sharply chided the nurse whenever she manifested any firmness. Whatever the boy yelped for, the mother's cry was, uniformly: "Let him have it, Mary." The feelings of the passengers had been wrought up to the boiling point. The remark was made: audibly here and there that "it would be worth paying for to have the young one chucked out of the window." The hopeful's mother was not moved by the very evident annoyance the passengers felt, and at last fixed herself down in her seat for a comfortable nap. The child had just slapped the nurse in her face for the hundredth time, and was preparing for a fresh attack, when a wasp came from somewhere in the car and flew against the window of the nurse's seat. The boy at once made a dive for the wasp as it struggled upward on the glass. The nurse quickly caught his hand, and said to him coaxingly: "Harry, mustn't touch! Bug will bite Harry!" Harry gave a savage yell, and began to kick and slap the nurse. The mother awoke from her nap. She heard her son's screams, and, without lifting her head or opening her eyes, she cried out sharply to the nurse: "Why will you tease that child so, Mary? Let him have it at once!" Mary let go of Harry. She settled back in her seat with an air of resignation; but there was a sparkle in her eye. The boy clutched at the wasp, and finally caught it. The yell that followed caused joy to the entire car, for every eye was on the boy. The mother woke again. "Mary," she cried, "let him have it!" Mary turned calmly in her seat, and with a wicked twinkle in her eye said: "Sure, he's got it, ma'am!" This brought the car down. Every one in it roared. The child's mother rose up in her seat with a jerk. When she learned what the matter was, she pulled her boy over the back of the seat, and awoke some sympathy for him by laying him across her knee and warming him nicely. In ten minutes he was as quiet and meek as a lamb, and he never opened his head again until the train reached its destination.
THE PREHENSILE TAILED COENDOU
The Havre aquarium has just put on exhibition one of the most curious, and especially one of the rarest, of animals—the prehensile tailed coendou (Synetheres prehensilis). It was brought from Venezuela by Mr. Equidazu, the commissary of the steamer Colombie.
Brehm says that never but two have been seen—one of them at the Hamburg zoological garden, and the other at London. The one under consideration, then, would be the third specimen that has been brought alive to Europe.
This animal, which is allied to the porcupines, is about three and a half feet long. The tail alone, is one and a half feet in length. The entire body, save the belly and paws, is covered with quills, which absolutely hide the fur. Upon the back, where these quills are longest (about four inches), they are strong, cylindrical, shining, sharp-pointed, white at the tip and base, and blackish-brown in the middle. The animal, in addition, has long and strong mustaches. The paws, anterior and posterior, have four fingers armed with strong nails, which are curved, and nearly cylindrical at the base.
Very little is known about the habits of the animal. All that we do know is, that it passes the day in slumber at the top of a tree, and that it prowls about at night, its food consisting chiefly of leaves of all kinds. When it wishes to descend from one branch to another, it suspends itself by the tail, and lets go of the first only when it has a firm hold of the other.
One peculiarity is that the extremity of the dorsal part of the tail is prehensile. This portion is deprived of quills for a length of about six inches.
The coendou does not like to be disturbed. When it is, it advances toward the intruder, and endeavors to frighten him by raising its quills all over its body. The natives of Central America eat its flesh and employ its quills for various domestic purposes.
The animal is quite extensively distributed throughout South America. It is found in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Guiana, and in some of the Lesser Antilles, such as Trinidad, Barbados, Saint Lucia, etc.
LITTLE QUEEN PET AND HER KINGDOM
With these words the stranger vanished, and Pet trotted on her way again, with the clock and key in her pocket.
She had not gone far till she began to notice a great many little cabins and cottages about the country, which looked very bare and uncomfortable. "Surely these must belong to the poor!" she thought; "and I daresay that is a very poor man who is following the plough over in that field."
She walked across the meadows until she reached the ploughman, and having noticed that his clothing was very bad indeed, and that he looked worn and sad, she formed her wish, and the next moment she was following the plough as if she had been at it all her life. She had passed completely into the man; there was not a vestige of her left outside of him; she felt her hands quite hard and horny; she took great long steps over the rough ground; she cried "Gee-up!" to the horses; and she knew very well if she could only look into a glass she should see, not Pet any more, but the sunburnt man toiling after his plough. She was quite bewildered by the change at first, but presently she began to interest herself greatly in all the new thoughts that poured into her mind. After a time she quite lost sight of her old self, and felt that she was the man. She put her horny hand in her pocket, and found that the clock and key were there safely, and this consoled her with the thought that she was not hopelessly buried in the ploughman. When the sun went down she stopped ploughing and went home to a little cottage which was hidden among some bushes in a field.
Half a dozen little hungry children, with poor, scanty clothing came running to meet her.
"Oh, father!" they cried, "mother has been so ill to-day, and neighbor Nancy says she will never get well without some wine to make her strong!"
The ploughman groaned at hearing this. "Ah," thought he, "where can I get money for wine? I can scarcely earn food enough for so many; and who will give me wine?"
Pet was greatly distressed at finding these painful thoughts throbbing through and through her. "At home in my palace," she said, "everybody drinks a bottle of wine a day, and they are not sick, and are all strong. I must see about this afterwards." Then she went into the cottage, and the first thing she did was to take the clock out of her pocket and wind it up with the little key, and hang it on a nail on the wall.
"What is that you have got?" said the poor woman from her straw bed.
"Oh, it is a clock that a gentleman made me a present of," said the ploughman.
The eldest girl now poured out some porridge on a plate and set it down before her father. Pet was very hungry, and was glad of anything she could get; but she did not like the porridge, and thought that it was very different indeed from the food she got at home. But while she was eating, the poor man's thoughts quite overwhelmed her.
"What is to become of them all?" he thought. "I have ten children, and my wages are so small, and food and clothing are so dear. When the poor wife was well, she used to look after the cow and poultry, and turn a little penny, but now she is not able, and I fear–"
"Oh, father! father! the cow is dead!" cried four boys, rushing into the cottage.
And the poor man bowed his head on the table and groaned.
"Why, this is dreadful!" thought Pet. "Is this really the sort of thing that poor people suffer. How I wish the month was up that I might do something for them!" And she tried to glance at the clock, but could not, because the man kept his eyes bent on the ground.
Pet was kept awake all that night by the ploughman's sad thoughts, and very early in the morning she was hard at work again, carrying a heavy heart with her all about the fields. Day after day this went on, and she was often very hungry, and very sad at hearing the complaints of the hungry children, and seeing the pale face of the sick woman. Every day things became worse. The ploughman got into debt through trying to procure a little wine to save his wife's life, and when rent-day came round he had not enough money to pay. Just as things arrived at this state, the clock ran down, and Pet, who had taken care to put it in her pocket that morning along with the key, suddenly found her own self standing alone in the field, watching the poor ploughman following his plough, exactly as she had at first beheld him. She at once began running away as fast as she could, when she was stopped by her friend Time, who stood in her path.
"Where are you running to now?" asked he.
"I am hurrying home to my palace to get money, and wine, and everything for these poor people!" cried Pet.
"Gently!" said Time, "I cannot allow it so soon. You must continue your experiences and trust the poor ploughman and his family to me; I will take care of them till you are able to do something for them. Were you to go back to your palace now, you would be kept there, and I should no longer be able to stand your friend; on the contrary, I might, perhaps, against my will, be forced to prove your enemy. Go on now, and remember my instructions."
And he vanished again.
Pet travelled a long way after this, and as she had to beg on the road for a little food and a night's lodging, she had very good opportunities for seeing the kindness with which the poor behave to each other. Mothers, who had hardly enough for their own children to eat, would give her a piece of bread without grumbling. At last, one evening, she arrived at a splendid large city, and felt quite bewildered with the crowds in the streets and the magnificence of the buildings. At first she could not see any people who looked very poor; but at last, when lingering in front of a very handsome shop window, she noticed a shabbily-dressed young girl go in at a side door, and something about her sad face made Pet think that this girl was in great distress. She formed her wish, and presently found that she, Pet, was the girl. Up a great many flights of stairs she went, passed gay show-rooms where fine ladies were trying on new dresses, and at last she arrived at a workroom where many white-faced girls were sewing busily with their heads bent down. The little seamstress, who was now one with Pet, had been out matching silks for the forewoman of the work, and now she sat down with a bright heap of satin on her knees. "Oh, dear!" thought Pet, as she threaded her needle, "how very heavy her heart is! I can hardly hold it up; and how weak she is? I feel as if she was going to faint!" And then Pet became quite occupied with the seamstress's thoughts as she had been once with the ploughman's. She went home to the girl's lodging, a wretched garret at the top of a wretched house, and there she found a poor old woman, the young girl's grandmother, and a little boy asleep on some straw. The poor old woman could not sleep with cold, though her good grand-daughter covered her over with her own clothes. Pet took care to hang up her clock, newly wound, as soon as she went in; and the poor old woman was so blind she did not take any notice of it. And, oh, what painful dreams Pet had that night in the girl's brain! This poor child's heart was torn to pieces by just the same kind of grief and terror which had distracted the mind of the ploughman: grief at seeing those she loved suffering want in spite of all her exertions for them, terror lest they should die of that suffering for need of something that she could not procure them. The little boy used to cry with hunger; the young seamstress often went to work without having had any breakfast, and with only a crust of bread in her pocket. It was a sad time for Pet, and she thought it would never pass over. At last, one day the poor girl fell ill, and Pet found herself lying on some straw in the corner of the garret, burning with fever, and no one near to help her. The poor old woman could only weep and mourn; and the boy, who was too young to get work to do, sat beside her in despair. Pet heard him say to himself at last, "I will go and beg; she told me not, but I must do something for her." And away he went but came back sobbing. Nobody would give him anything; everybody told him he ought to be at school. "And so I should be if she were well," he cried; "but I can't go and leave her here to die!" The sufferings of the poor girl were greatly increased by her brother's misery; and what was her horror when she heard him mutter suddenly: "I will go and steal something. The shops are full of everything. I won't let her die!" Then before she had time to stop him he had darted out of the room.
Just at this moment Pet's clock ran down, and she flew off, forgetting Time's commands, and only bent on reaching her palace. But her strange friend appeared in her path as before.
"Oh, don't stop me!" cried Pet. "The girl will die, and the boy will turn out a thief!"
"Leave them to me! leave them to me!" said Time, "and go on obediently doing as I bid you."
Pet went away in tears this time, still fancying she could feel the poor sick girl's woful heart beating in her own breast. But by-and-by she cheered herself, remembering Time's promise, and hurried on as fast as she could. She met with a great many sad people after this, and lived a great many different lives, so that she became quite familiar with all the sorrows and difficulties of the poor. She reflected that it was a very sad thing that there should be so much distress in her rich kingdom, and felt much puzzled to know how she could remedy the matter. One day, having just left an extremely wretched family, she travelled a long way without stopping, and she had not seen a very poor-looking dwelling for many miles. All the people she met seemed happy and merry, and they sang over their work as if they had very little care. When she peeped into the little roadside houses she found that they were neatly furnished and comfortable. Even in the towns she could not find any starving people, except a few wicked ones who would not take the trouble to be industrious. At last she asked a man what was the reason that she could not meet with any miserable people?
"Oh," he said, "it is because of our good king; his laws are so wise that nobody is allowed to want."
"Where does he live? and what country is this?" asked Pet.
"This is Silver-country," said the man, "and our king lives over yonder in a castle built of blocks of silver ornamented with rubies and pearls."
Pet then remembered that she had heard her nurses talk about Silver-country, which was the neighboring country to her own. She immediately longed to see this wise king and learn his laws, so that she might know how to behave when she came to sit on her throne, and she trotted on towards the Silver Castle, which now began to rise out of a wreath of clouds in the distance. Arrived at the place, she crept up to the windows of the great dining-hall and peeped in, and there was the good king sitting at his table in a mantle of cloth of silver, and a glorious crown, wrought most exquisitely out of the good wishes of his people, encircling his head. Opposite to him sat his beautiful queen, and beside him a noble-looking lad who was his only son. Pet, seeing this happy sight, immediately formed her wish, and in another moment found herself the king of Silver-country sitting at the head of his board.
"Oh, what a good, great, warm, happy heart it is," thought Pet, and she felt more joy than she had ever known in her life before. "A month will be quite too short a time to live in this noble being. But I must make the best of my time and learn everything I can."
Pet now found her mind filled with the most wonderfully good, wise thoughts, and she took great pains to learn them off by heart, so that she might keep them in her memory forever. Besides all the education she received in this way, she also enjoyed a great happiness, of which she had as yet known nothing, the happiness of living in a loving family, where there was no terrible sorrow or fear to embitter tender hearts. She felt how fondly the king loved his only son, and how sweet it was to the king to know that his boy loved him. When the young prince leaned against his father's knees and told him all about his sports, Pet would remember that she also had had a father, and that he would have loved her like this if he had lived. She could have lived here in the Silver Castle forever, but that could not be. One day the little gold clock ran down and Pet was obliged to hasten away out of Silver-country.
She made great efforts to remember all the king's wise thoughts, and kept repeating his good laws over and over again to herself as she went along. She was now back again in her own country, and the first person she met was a very miserable-looking old woman who lived in a little mud hovel in a forest, and supported herself wretchedly by gathering a few sticks for sale. She was so weak, and so often ill that she could not earn much, and she was dreadfully lonely, as all her children were dead but one; and that one, a brave son whom she loved dearly, had gone away across the world in hope of making money for her. He had never come back, and she feared that he too was dead. Pet did not know these things, of course, until she had formed her wish and was living in the old woman.
This was the saddest existence that Pet had experienced yet, and she felt very anxious for the month to pass away. After the happiness she had enjoyed in Silver-country, the excessive hardship and loneliness of the old woman's life seemed very hard to bear. All day long she wandered about the woods, picking up sticks and tying them in little bundles, and, perhaps, in the end she would only receive a penny for the work of her day. Some days she could not leave her hut, and would lie there alone without anything to eat.
"Oh, my son, my dear son!" she would cry, "where are you now, and will you ever come back to me?"
Pet watched her clock very eagerly, longing for the month to come to an end; but the clock still kept going and going, as if it never meant to stop. For a good while Pet thought that it was only because of her unhappiness and impatience that the time seemed so long, but at last she discovered to her horror that her key was lost!
All her searches for it proved vain. It was quite evident that the key must have dropped through a hole in the old woman's tattered pocket, and fallen somewhere among the heaps of dried leaves, or into the wilderness of the brushwood of the forest.
"Tick, tick! tick, tick!" went that unmerciful clock from its perch on the wall, all through the long days and nights, and poor Pet was in despair at the thought of living locked up in the old woman all her life. Now, indeed, she could groan most heartily when the old woman groaned, and shed bitter tears which rolled plentifully down the old woman's wrinkled cheeks and over her nose.
"Oh, Time, Time, my friend!" she thought, "will you not come to my assistance?"
But though Time fully intended to stand her friend all through her troubles, still he did not choose to help her at that particular moment. And so days, weeks and months went past; and then the years began to go over, and Pet was still locked up in the miserable old woman.
Seven years had passed away and Pet had become in some degree reconciled to her sorrowful existence. She wandered about the forest picking up her sticks, and trying to cheer herself up a little by gathering bouquets of the pretty forest flowers. People passing by often saw the sad figure, all in gray hair and tatters, sitting on a trunk of a fallen tree, wailing and moaning, and, of course, they thought it was altogether the poor old woman lamenting for her son. They never thought of its being also Pet, bewailing her dreary imprisonment.
