Stories of Comedy
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Various >> Stories of Comedy
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Well, thank God and his Grace, we'll have no more thrigonomethry nor
scripther in Connaught. We'll hould our lodges every Saturday night, as
we used to do, wid our chairman behind the masther's desk, and we'll
hear our mass every Sunday morning wid the blessed priest standing afore
the same.
I wisht to goodness I hadn't parted wid my Seven Champions ov
Christendom and Freney the Robber: they're books that'll be in great
requist in Leithrim as soon as the pasthoral gets wind. Glory be to God!
I've done wid their lecthirs,--they may all go and be d--d wid their
consumption and production.
I'm off to Tallymactaggart before daylight in the morning, where I'll
thry whether a sod or two o' turf can't consume a cart-load ov heresy,
and whether a weekly meeting ov the lodge can't produce a new thayory ov
rints.
But afore I take my lave ov you, I may as well finish my story about
poor Father Tom that I hear is coming up to slate the heretics in Adam
and Eve during the Lint.
The Pope--and indeed it ill became a good Catholic to say anything agin
him--no more would I, only that his Riv'rence was in it--but you see the
fact ov it is, that the Pope was as envious as ever he could be, at
seeing himself sacked right and left by Father Tom; and bate out o' the
face, the way he was, on every science and subjec' that was started. So,
not to be outdone altogether, he says to his Riv'rence, "you're a man
that's fond of the brute crayation, I hear, Misther Maguire?"
"I don't deny it," says his Riv'rence. "I've dogs that I'm willing to
run agin any man's, ay, or to match them agin any other dogs in the
world for genteel edication and polite manners," says he.
"I'll hould you a pound," says the Pope, "that I've a quadhruped in my
possession that's a wiser baste nor any dog in your kennel."
"Done," says his Riv'rence, and they staked the money.
"What can this larned quadhruped o' yours do?" says his Riv'rence.
"It's my mule," says the Pope, "and, if you were to offer her goolden
oats and clover off the meadows o' Paradise, sorra taste ov aither she'd
let pass her teeth till the first mass is over every Sunday or holiday
in the year."
"Well, and what 'ud you say if I showed you a baste ov mine," says his
Riv'rence, "that, instead ov fasting till first mass is over only, fasts
out the whole four-and-twenty hours ov every Wednesday and Friday in the
week as reg'lar as a Christian?"
"O, be asy, Masther Maguire," says the Pope.
"You don't b'lieve me, don't you?" says his Riv'rence; "very well, I'll
soon show you whether or no." And he put his knuckles in his mouth, and
gev a whistle that made the Pope stop his fingers in his ears. The
aycho, my dear, was hardly done playing wid the cobwebs in the cornish,
when the door flies open, and in jumps Spring. The Pope happened to be
sitting next the door, betuxt him and his Riv'rence, and, may I never
die, if he didn't clear him, thriple crown and all, at one spring.
"God's presence be about us!" says the Pope, thinking it was an evil
spirit come to fly away wid him for the lie that he had told in regard
ov his mule (for it was nothing more nor a thrick that consisted in
grazing the brute's teeth): but, seeing it was only one ov the greatest
beauties ov a greyhound that he'd ever laid his epistolical eyes on, he
soon recovered ov his fright, and began to pat him, while Father Tom ris
and went to the sideboord, where he cut a slice ov pork, a slice ov
beef, a slice ov mutton, and a slice ov salmon, and put them all on a
plate thegither. "Here, Spring, my man," says he, setting the plate down
afore him on the hearthstone, "here's your supper for you this blessed
Friday night." Not a word more he said nor what I tell you; and, you may
believe it or not, but it's the blessed truth that the dog, afther jist
tasting the salmon, and spitting it out again, lifted his nose out o'
the plate, and stood wid his jaws wathering, and his tail wagging,
looking up in his Riv'rence's face, as much as to say, "Give me your
absolution, till I hide them temptations out o' my sight."
"There's a dog that knows his duty," says his Riv'rence; "there's a
baste that knows how to conduct himself aither in the parlor or the
field. You think him a good dog, looking at him here: but I wisht you
seen him on the side ov Sleeve-an-Eirin! Be my soul, you'd say the hill
was running away from undher him. O, I wisht you had been wid me," says
he, never letting on to see the dog stale, "one day, last Lent, that I
was coming from mass. Spring was near a quarther ov a mile behind me,
for the childher was delaying him wid bread and butther at the chapel
door; when a lump ov a hare jumped out ov the plantations ov Grouse
Lodge and ran acrass the road; so I gev the whilloo, and knowing that
she'd take the rise of the hill, I made over the ditch, and up through
Mullaghcashel as hard as I could pelt, still keeping her in view, but
afore I had gone a perch, Spring seen her, and away the two went like
the wind, up Drumrewy, and down Clooneen, and over the river, widout his
being able onc't to turn her. Well, I run on till I come to the
Diffagher, and through it I went, for the wather was low and I didn't
mind being wet shod, and out on the other side, where I got up on a
ditch, and seen sich a coorse as I'll be bound to say was never seen
afore or since. If Spring turned that hare onc't that day, he turned her
fifty times, up and down, back and for'ard, throughout and about. At
last he run her right into the big quarryhole in Mullaghbawn, and when I
went up to look for her fud, there I found him sthretched on his side,
not able to stir a foot, and the hare lying about an inch afore his nose
as dead as a door-nail, and divil a mark of a tooth upon her. Eh,
Spring, isn't that thrue?" says he. Jist at that minit the clock sthruck
twelve, and, before you could say thrap-sticks, Spring had the plateful
of mate consaled. "Now," says his Riv'rence, "hand me over my pound, for
I've won my bate fairly."
"You'll excuse me," says the Pope, pocketing his money, "for we put the
clock half an hour back, out ov compliment to your Riv'rence," says he,
"and it was Sathurday morning afore he came up at all."
"Well, it's no matther," says his Riv'rence, putting back his pound-note
in his pocket-book. "Only," says he, "it's hardly fair to expect a brute
baste to be so well skilled in the science ov chronology."
In troth his Riv'rence was badly used in the same bet, for he won it
clever; and, indeed, I'm afeard the shabby way he was thrated had some
effect in putting it into his mind to do what he did. "Will your
Holiness take a blast ov the pipe?" says he, dhrawing out his dhudeen.
"I never smoke," says the Pope, "but I haven't the least objection to
the smell of the tobaccay."
"O, you had betther take a dhraw," says his Riv'rence, "it'll relish the
dhrink, that 'ud be too luscious entirely, widout something to flavor
it."
"I had thoughts," said the Pope, wid the laste sign ov a hiccup on him,
"ov getting up a broiled bone for the same purpose."
"Well," says his Riv'rence, "a broiled bone 'ud do no manner ov harm at
this present time; but a smoke," says he, "'ud flavor both the devil and
the dhrink."
"What sort o' tobaccay is it that's in it?" says the Pope.
"Raal nagur-head," says his Riv'rence, "a very mild and salubrious
spacies ov the philosophic weed."
"Then, I don't care if I do take a dhraw," says the Pope. Then Father
Tom held the coal himself till his Holiness had the pipe lit; and they
sat widout saying anything worth mentioning for about five minutes.
At last the Pope says to his Riv'rence, "I dunna what gev me this plaguy
hiccup," says he. "Dhrink about," says he--"Begorra," he says, "I think
I'm getting merrier'an's good for me. Sing us a song, your Riv'rence,"
says he.
Father Tom then sung him Monatagrenage and the Bunch o' Rushes, and he
was mighty well pleased wid both, keeping time wid his hands, and
joining in the choruses, when his hiccup 'ud let him. At last, my dear,
he opens the lower button ov his waistcoat, and the top one of his
waistband, and calls to Masther Anthony to lift up one ov the windys. "I
dunna what's wrong wid me, at all at all," says he; "I'm mortal sick."
"I thrust," says his Riv'rence, "the pasthry that you ate at dinner
hasn't disagreed wid your Holiness's stomach."
"O my! oh!" says the Pope, "what's this at all?" gasping for breath, and
as pale as a sheet, wid a could swate bursting out over his forehead,
and the palms ov his hands spread out to cotch the air. "O my! O my!"
says he, "fetch me a basin!--Don't spake to me. Oh!--oh!--blood
alive!--O, my head, my head, hould my head!--oh!--ubh!--I'm
poisoned!--ach!"
"It was them plaguy pasthries," says his Riv'rence. "Hould his head
hard," says he, "and clap a wet cloth over his timples. If you could
only thry another dhraw o' the pipe, your Holiness, it 'ud set you to
rights in no time."
"Carry me to bed," says the Pope, "and never let me see that wild Irish
priest again. I'm poisoned by his manes--ubplsch!--ach!--ach!--He dined
wid Cardinal Wayld yestherday," says he, "and he's bribed him to take me
off. Send for a confessor," says he, "for my latther end's approaching.
My head's like to split--so it is!--O my! O my!--ubplsch!--ach!"
Well, his Riv'rence never thought it worth his while to make him an
answer; but, when he seen how ungratefully he was used, afther all his
throuble in making the evening agreeable to the ould man, he called
Spring, and put the but-end ov the second bottle into his pocket, and
left the house widout once wishing "Good night, an' plaisant dhrames to
you"; and, in troth, not one of _them_ axed him to lave them a lock ov
his hair.
That's the story as I heard it tould: but myself doesn't b'lieve over
one half of it. Howandiver, when all's done, it's a shame, so it is,
that he's not a bishop this blessed day and hour: for, next to the
goiant ov Saint Garlath's, he's out and out the cleverest fellow ov the
whole jing-bang.
JOHNNY DARBYSHIRE.
BY WILLIAM HOWITT.
John Darbyshire, or, according to the regular custom of the country,
Johnny Darbyshire, was a farmer living in one of the most obscure parts
of the country, on the borders of the Peak of Derbyshire. His fathers
before him had occupied the same farm for generations; and as they had
been Quakers from the days of George Fox, who preached there and
converted them, Johnny also was a Quaker. That is, he was, as many
others were, and no doubt are, habitually a Quaker. He was a Quaker in
dress, in language, in attendance of their meetings, and, above all, in
the unmitigated contempt which he felt and expressed for everything like
fashion, for the practices of the world, for the Church, and for music
and amusements. There never was a man, from the first to the present day
of the society, who so thoroughly embodied and exhibited that quality
attributed to the Quaker, in the rhyming nursery alphabet,--"Q was a
Quaker, and would not bow down."
No, Johnny Darbyshire would not have bowed down to any mortal power. He
would have marched into the presence of the king with his hat on, and
would have addressed him with just the same unembarrassed freedom as
"The old chap out of the West Countrie" is made to do in the song. As to
any of the more humble and conceding qualities usually attributed to the
peaceful Quaker, Johnny had not an atom of those about him. Never was
there a more pig-headed, arbitrary, positive, pugnacious fellow. He
would argue anybody out of their opinions by the hour; he would "threep
them down," as he called it, that is, point blank and with a loud voice
insist on his own possession of the right, and of the sound common-sense
of the matter; and if he could not convince them, would at least
confound them with his obstreperous din and violence of action. That was
what he called clearing the field, and not leaving his antagonist a leg
to stand on. Having thus fairly overwhelmed, dumfoundered, and tired out
some one with his noise, he would go off in triumph, and say to the
bystanders as he went, "There, lads, you see he hadn't a word to say for
himself"; and truly a clever fellow must he have been who could have got
a word in edgeways when Johnny had once fairly got his steam up, and was
shrinking and storming like a cat-o'-mountain.
Yet had anybody told Johnny that he was no Quaker, he would have
"threeped them down" that they did not know what a Quaker meant. What!
were not his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather
before him all Quakers? Was not he born in the Society, brought up in
it? Hadn't he attended first-day, week-day, preparative, monthly,
quarterly, and sometimes yearly meetings too, all his life? Had not he
regularly and handsomely subscribed to the monthly, and the national,
and the Ackworth School Stocks? Had he not been on all sorts of
appointments; to visit new members, new comers into the meeting; to warn
disorderly walkers; nay, had he not sate even on committees in London at
yearly meetings? Had he not received and travelled with ministers when
they came on religious visits into these parts? Had he not taken them in
his tax-cart to the next place, and been once upset in a deep and dirty
lane with a weighty ministering friend, and dislocated his collar-bone?
What? He not a Quaker! Was George Fox one, did they think; or William
Penn, or Robert Barclay, indeed?
Johnny Darbyshire _was_ a Quaker. He had the dress, and address, and all
the outward testimonies and marks of a Quaker; nay, he was more; he was
an overseer of the meeting, and broke up the meetings. Yes, and he would
have them to know that he executed his office well. Ay, well indeed;
without clock to look at, or without pulling out his watch, or being
within hearing of any bell, or any other thing that could guide him, he
would sit on the front seat of his meeting where not a word was spoken,
exactly for an hour and three quarters to a minute, and then break it up
by shaking hands with the Friend who sate next to him. Was not that an
evidence of a religious tact and practice? And had not the Friends once
when he was away, just like people in a ship which had lost both rudder
and compass, gone drifting in unconsciousness from ten in the morning
till three in the afternoon, and would not then have known that it was
time to break up the meeting, but that somebody's servant was sent to
see what had happened, and why they did not come home to dinner?
Johnny could see a sleeper as soon as any, were he ensconced in the
remotest and obscurest corner of the meeting, and let him hold up his
head and sleep as cleverly as he might from long habit. And did not he
once give a most notable piece of advice to a _rich_ Friend who was a
shocking sleeper? Was not this Friend very ill, and didn't Johnny go to
see him; and didn't he, when the Friend complained that he could get no
sleep, and that not all the physic, the strongest opium even of the
doctor's shop, could make him,--didn't Johnny Darbyshire say right
slap-bang out, which not another of the plainest-spoken Friends dare
have done to a rich man like that,--"Stuff and nonsense; and a fig for
opium and doctor's stuff,--send, man, send for the meeting-house bench,
and lie thee down on that, and I'll be bound thou'lt sleep like one of
the seven sleepers."
Undoubtedly Johnny was a Quaker; a right slap-dash Quaker of the old
Foxite school; and had anybody come smiling to him in the hope of
getting anything out of him, he would have said to him as George Fox
said to Colonel Hackett, "Beware of hypocrisy and a rotten heart!" True,
had you questioned him as to his particular religious doctrines or
articles of faith, he would not have been very clear, or very ready to
give you any explanation at all, for the very best of reasons,--he was
not so superstitious as to have a creed. A creed! that was a rag of the
old woman of Babylon. No, if you wanted to know all about doctrines and
disputations, why, you might look into Barclay's Apology. There was a
book big enough for you, he should think. For himself, like most of his
cloth, he would confine himself to his _feelings_. He would employ a
variety of choice and unique phrases; such as, "If a man want to know
what religion is, he must not go running after parsons, and bishops, and
all that sort of man-made ministers, blind leaders of the blind, who can
talk by the hour, but about what neither man, woman, nor child, for the
life of them, can tell, except when they come for their tithes, or their
Easter dues, and then they speak plain enough with a vengeance. One of
these Common-Prayer priests," said he, "once came to advise me about the
lawfulness of paying Church-rates, and, instead of walking into my
parlor, he walked through the next door, and nearly broke his neck, into
the cellar. A terrible stramash of a lumber, and a plunging and a
groaning we heard somewhere; and rushing out, lo and behold! it was no
other than Diggory Dyson, the parish priest, who had gone headlong to
the bottom of the cellar steps, and had he not cut his temples against
the brass tap of a beer-barrel and bled freely, he might have died on
the spot. And that was a man set up to guide the multitude! Had he been
only led and guided by the Spirit of God, as a true minister should be,
he would never have gone neck-foremost down my cellar steps. That's your
blind leader of the blind!"
But if Johnny Darbyshire thought the "Common-Prayer priests" obscure,
they must have thought him sevenfold so. Instead of doctrines and such
pagan things, he talked solemnly of "centring down"; "being renewedly
made sensible"; "having his mind drawn to this and that thing"; "feeling
himself dipped into deep baptism"; "feeling a sense of duty"; and of
"seeing, or not seeing his way clear" into this or that matter. But his
master phrase was "living near to the truth"; and often, when other
people thought him particularly provoking and insulting, it was only
"because he hated a lie and the father of lies." Johnny thought that he
lived so near to the truth, that you would have thought Truth was his
next-door neighbor, or his lodger, and not living down at the bottom of
her well as she long has been.
Truly was that religious world in which Johnny Darbyshire lived a most
singular one. In that part of the country, George Fox had been
particularly zealous and well received. A simple country people was just
the people to be affected by his warm eloquence and strong manly sense.
He settled many meetings there, which, however, William Penn may be said
to have unsettled by his planting of Pennsylvania. These Friends flocked
over thither with, or after him, and left a mere remnant behind them.
This remnant--and it was like the remnant in a draper's shop, a very
old-fashioned one--continued still to keep up their meetings, and carry
on their affairs as steadily and gravely as Fox and his contemporaries
did, if not so extensively and successfully. They had a meeting at
Codnor Breach, at Monny-Ash in the Peak, at Pentridge, at Toad-hole
Furnace, at Chesterfield, etc. Most of these places were thoroughly
country places, some of them standing nearly alone in the distant
fields; and the few members belonging to them might be seen on Sundays,
mounted on strong horses, a man and his wife often on one, on saddle and
pillion, or in strong tax-carts; and others, generally the young,
proceeding on foot over fields and through woods, to these meetings.
They were truly an old-world race, clad in very old-world garments.
Arrived at their meeting, they sate generally an hour and three quarters
in profound silence, for none of them had a minister in them, and then
returned again. In winter they generally had a good fire in a chamber,
and sate comfortably round it.
Once a month, they jogged off in similar style to one of these meetings
in particular, to what they called their monthly meeting, where they
paid in their subscriptions for the poor, and other needs of the
society, and read over and made answers to a set of queries on the moral
and religious state of their meetings. One would have thought that this
business must be so very small that it would be readily despatched; but
not so. Small enough, Heaven knows! it was; but then they made a
religious duty of its transaction, and went through it as solemnly and
deliberately as if the very salvation of the kingdom depended on it. O,
what a mighty balancing of straws was there! In answering the query,
whether their meetings were pretty regularly kept up and attended,
though perhaps there was but half a dozen members to one meeting, yet
would it be weighed and weighed again whether the phrase should be, that
it was "pretty well attended," or "indifferently attended," or
"attended, with some exceptions." This stupendous business having,
however, at length been got through, then all the men adjourned to the
room where the women had, for the time, been just as laboriously and
gravely engaged; and a table was soon spread by a person agreed with,
with a good substantial dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding; and the
good people grew right sociable, chatty, and even merry in their way;
while, all the time in the adjoining stable, or, as in one case, in the
stable under them, their steeds, often rough, wild creatures, thrust
perhaps twenty into a stable without dividing stalls, were kicking,
squealing, and rioting in a manner that obliged some of the good people
occasionally to rise from their dinners, and endeavor to diffuse a
little of their own quietness among them. Or in summer their horses
would be all loose in the graveyard before the meeting, rearing,
kicking, and screaming in a most furious manner; which, however, only
rarely seemed to disturb the meditations of their masters and
mistresses.
And to these monthly meetings over what long and dreary roads, on what
dreadfully wet and wintry days, through what mud and water, did these
simple and pious creatures, wrapped in great-coats and thick cloaks, and
defended with oil-skin hoods, travel all their lives long? Not a soul
was more punctual in attendance than Johnny Darbyshire. He was a little
man, wearing a Quaker suit of drab, his coat long, his hat not cocked
but slouched, and his boots well worn and well greased.
Peaceful as he sate in these meetings, yet out of them, as I have
remarked, he was a very Tartar, and he often set himself to execute what
he deemed justice in a very dogged and original style. We may, as a
specimen, take this instance. On his way to his regular meeting he had
to pass through a toll-bar; and being on Sundays exempt by law from
paying at it, it may be supposed that the bar-keeper did not fling open
the gate often with the best grace. One Sunday evening, however, Johnny
Darbyshire had, from some cause or other, stayed late with his friends
after afternoon meeting. When he passed through the toll-gate he gave
his usual nod to the keeper, and was passing on; but the man called out
to demand the toll, declaring that it was no longer Sunday night, but
Monday morning, being past twelve o'clock.
"Nay, friend, thou art wrong," said Johnny, pulling out his watch: "see,
it yet wants a quarter."
"No, I tell you," replied the keeper, gruffly, "it is past twelve. Look,
there is my clock."
"Ay, friend, but thy clock, like thyself, doesn't speak the truth. Like
its master, it is a little too hasty. I assure thee my watch is right,
for I just now compared it by the steeple-house clock in the town."
"I tell you," replied the keeper, angrily, "I've nothing to do with your
watch; I go by my clock, and there it is."
"Well, I think thou art too exact with me, my friend."
"Will you pay me or not?" roared the keeper; "you go through often
enough in the devil's name without paying."
"Gently, gently, my friend," replied Johnny; "there is the money: and
it's really after twelve o'clock, thou says?"
"To be sure."
"Well, very well; then, for the next twenty-four hours I can go through
again without paying?"
"To be sure; everybody knows that."
"Very well, then I now bid thee farewell." And with that, Johnny
Darbyshire jogged on. The gatekeeper, chuckling at having at last
extorted a double toll from the shrewd Quaker, went to bed, not on that
quiet road expecting further disturbance till towards daylight; but,
just as he was about to pop into bed, he heard some one ride up and cry,
"Gate!"
Internally cursing the late traveller, he threw on his things and
descended to open the gate, when he was astonished to see the Quaker
returned.
"Thou says it really _is_ past twelve, friend?"
"To be sure."
"Then open the gate: I have occasion to ride back again."
The gate flew open, Johnny Darbyshire trotted back towards the town, and
the man, with double curses in his mind, returned up stairs. This time
he was not so sure of exemption from interruption, for he expected the
Quaker would in a while be coming back homewards again. And he was quite
right. Just as he was about to put out his candle, there was a cry of
"Gate." He descended, and behold the Quaker once more presented himself.
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