Part 19 (2/2)

”All this may be very fine,” said Harcourt, contemptuously, ”but give _me_ the sentiments of a living man, or one that has lived, in preference to all the imaginary characters that have ever adorned a story.”

”Just as I suppose that you'd say that a soldier in the Blues, or some big, hulking corporal in the Guards, is a finer model of the human form than ever Praxiteles chiselled.”

”I know which I 'd rather have alongside of me in a charge, Doctor,”

said Harcourt, laughing; and then, to change the topic, he pointed to a lone cabin on the sea-sh.o.r.e, miles away, as it seemed, from all other habitations.

”That's Michel Cady's, sir,” said Traynor; ”he lives by birds,--hunting them saygulls and cormorants through the crevices of the rocks, and stealing the eggs. There isn't a precipice that he won't climb, not a cliff that he won't face.”

”Well, if that be his home, the pursuit does not seem a profitable one.”

”'Tis as good as breaking stones on the road for four-pence a day, or carrying sea-weed five miles on your back to manure the potatoes,” said Billy, mournfully.

”That's exactly the very thing that puzzles me,” said Harcourt, ”why, in a country so remarkable for fertility, every one should be so miserably poor!”

”And you never heard any explanation of it?”

”Never; at least, never one that satisfied me.”

”Nor ever will you,” said Billy, sententiously.

”And why so?”

”Because,” said he, drawing a long breath, as if preparing for a discourse,--”because there's no man capable of going into the whole subject; for it's not merely an economical question or a social one, but it is metaphysical, and religious, and political, and ethnological, and historical,--ay, and geographical too! You have to consider, first, who and what are the aborigines. A conquered people that never gave in they were conquered. Who are the rulers? A Saxon race that always felt that they were infarior to them they ruled over!”

”By Jove, Doctor, I must stop you there; I never heard any acknowledgment of this inferiority you speak of.”

”I'd like to get a goold medal for arguin' it out with you,” said Billy.

”And, after all, I don't see how it would resolve the original doubt,”

said Harcourt. ”I want to know why the people are so poor, and I don't want to hear of the battle of Clontarf, or the Danes at Dundalk.”

”There it is, you'd like to narrow down a great question of race, language, traditions, and laws to a little miserable dispute about labor and wages. O Manchester, Manchester! how ye're in the heart of every Englishman, rich or poor, gentle or simple! You say you never heard of any confession of inferiority. Of course you did n't; but quite the reverse,--a very confident sense of being far better than the poor Irish; and I'll tell you how, and why, just as you, yourself, after a discuss.h.i.+on with me, when you find yourself dead bate, and not a word to reply, you 'll go home to a good dinner and a bottle of wine, dry clothes and a bright fire; and no matter how hard my argument pushed you, you'll remember that _I'm_ in rags, in a dirty cabin, with potatoes to ate and water to drink, and you 'll say, at all events, 'I 'm better off than he is;' and there's your superiority, neither more or less,--there it is! And all the while, _I'm_ saying the same thing to _myself_,--'Sorrow matter for his fine broadcloth, and his white linen, and his very best roast beef that he's atin',--I 'm his master! In all that dignifies the s.p.a.cies in them grand qualities that makes us poets, rhetoricians, and the like, in those elegant attributes that, as the poet says,--

”In all our pursuits Lifts us high above brutes,'”

--in these, I say again, I 'm his master!'”

As Billy finished his growing panegyric upon his country and himself, he burst out in a joyous laugh, and cried, ”Did ye ever hear conceit like that? Did ye ever expect to see the day that a ragged poor blackguard like _me_ would dare to say as much to one like _you?_ And, after all, it's the greatest compliment I could pay you.”

”How so, Billy? I don't exactly see _that_.”

”Why, that if you weren't a gentleman,--a raal gentleman, born and bred,--I could never have ventured to tell you what I said now. It is because, in _your own_ refined feelings, you can pardon all the coa.r.s.eness of _mine_, that I have my safety.”

”You're as great a courtier as you are a scholar, Billy,” said Harcourt, laughing; ”meanwhile, I'm not likely to be enlightened as to the cause of Irish poverty.”

”'T is a whole volume I could write on the same subject,” said Billy; ”for there's so many causes in operation, com-binin', and a.s.sistin', and aggravatin' each other. But if you want the head and front of the mischief in one word, it is this, that no Irishman ever gave his heart and sowl to his own business, but always was mindin' something else that he had nothin' to say to; and so, ye see, the priest does be thinkin' of politics, the parson's thinkin' of the priest, the people are always on the watch for a crack at the agent or the t.i.the-proctor, and the landlord, instead of looking after his property, is up in Dublin dinin'

with the Lord-Leftinint and abusin' his tenants. I don't want to screen myself, nor say I'm better than my neighbors, for though I have a larned profession to live by, I 'd rather be writin' a ballad, and singin' it too, down Thomas Street, than I 'd be lecturin' at the Surgeons' Hall.”

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