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COLONEL O'SHAUGHNESSY.

I was two-and-twenty years of age before I made up my mind as to what business I should follow for life. My father wished me to pursue his calling of a lawyer, but I hated law. My mother proposed bring. ing me up to the church: this I disliked also. It was then suggested, but with no better success, that I should study physic. Law was too sedentary for my disposition. I could not think of it without bringing to mind musty papers, equivocations, and endless chicanery. I had imbibed the common and absurd notion that all lawyers were rogues. I remembered the sharp, meagre, sallow figures who haunted our legal courts at Dublin, and if I saw a man unusually crafty, or expert at overreaching his neighbour, I set him straightway down as a lawyer. It was strange that I should possess such notions, for my father was one of the honestest men in existence, and one of the fattest.

The church. This was something better, but it would not do. Parsons were associated in my mind with fat paunches, and unmeaning indolence. The

life of a parish priest, confined to one spot of the earth, and having no associates but country bumpkins and old maids, was intolerable. I knew several clergymen, and they were fat, pious, heavy-headed fellows. The parson of our parish, moreover, was a blockhead -at least, so I, in my wisdom, thought proper to consider him. This knocked on the head all hopes of turning my attention to the church.

Physic. I loathed the idea. Surgeons, physicians, apothecaries, men-midwives, were my dislike. Pills, potions, and pectorals, might be very well in their way, but to me, the very thought of them was abomination. My father's patience was at an end. "Tom," said he," you are now a man, and it is high time you should think of doing something for yourself. Suppose you follow my profession?" I begged to be excused.

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Suppose you become a parson ?"

"Never. Parsons are fat, stupid, and gormandizing."

"Or a physician ?"

"Worse than all." My father could contain himself no longer. His plump face, for he was very choleric, was flushed to a deep crimson. "Tom, I shall give you but two days to consider of it. You have befooled your mother and me long enough. What the devil, sir! do you mean to do nothing for yourself in this life? Before I was a year older than you, I was married, and in the receipt of two hundred ayear. If you are not prepared to give me a decisive

VOL. II.

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answer by the day after to-morrow, by heavens, I willHe did not finish the sentence; so much the worse. It was his anger which prevented him, and I knew that something serious was in the wind.

I did not sleep well that night, how could I? Things were come to a bearing. I knew my father's temper too well to think that he would wait any longer. By one means and another I had procrastinated and put off for more than a twelvemonth, and a greater delay it was impossible to expect. Next day I was unusually dull, and so were my father and mother. I saw that I had offended them, but in what manner to recover their good graces, without doing injustice to my own inclinations, I was at a loss to Lawyer-parson-doctor, floated alternately like motes through my brain. I must be one of the three; so my worthy parents had determined. Never, in the course of my life, did I make so many wry faces; the more I considered the matter, the more intolerable did it seem.

conceive.

How things might have ended, it is difficult to say, when my mother's eldest brother, Colonel O'Shaughnessy, arrived at our house. He had just reached England, from India, with his regiment, after an absence of ten years. Perhaps the whole army could not furnish such an admirable illustration of the ludicrous, both in person and manner. In stature he rose to six feet two inches, and was, without exception, the thinnest man, to be in good health, I ever saw. His legs were like spindle-shanks, and his long lank

arms dangled from his shoulders, as if stuck there artificially, instead of being natural members. His nose and chin were both inordinately peaked: his mouth large, and his cheeks hollow, and marked with strong lines. In addition to this, he squinted oddly with both eyes. His complexion was of a brownish yellow. The fore and lateral parts of his head were quite bald, but the hair which still clung behind, was gathered into a queue, which descended about a foot down his back. This strange caricature of the human form was dressed in a long military coat, with a golden epaulette on each shoulder. On his head he wore a cocked hat, surmounted by a white feather a couple of feet high. His lower limbs were cased in immense Hessian boots, reaching above the knee, and tight buckskin small clothes-while a sword sheathed in a steel case, and hilted with silver and shagreen, dangled at his side. Such was the exterior of Colonel O'Shaughnessy.

I had always been a favourite with this military relative. I was called after him, and, during my boyhood, he showed me many marks of kindness. I remember the very day on which he left us twelve years before I was then ten-he filled my pockets with pence, because I had beaten a boy bigger than myself. He swore it was what he had done when of that age. To him I communicated the awkward situation in which I was placed, and begged his advice.

"So they propose," said he, "to make a parson of you, boy? No, blood and wounds, that will never do. We have got plenty of them in the army. As for a

You must enter the army.

doctor, every regiment has a brace of them: there is no need for you to add to the number. A lawyer do they talk of making you?"-here my uncle squinted horribly, and grasped the handle of his sword-"I tell you, Tom, if you become a lawyer, you are no nephew of mine. Thunder and lightning, did I not once loose a hundred pounds by a rascally attorney! I tell you, Tom, there is no such commission in the service as that of a lawyer. No, boy; they are going to spoil your fine genius. That is the only place for a lad of spirit." I caught, without a moment's delay, at this suggestion, and expressed my willingness to follow his advice. In truth I had always a penchant towards a military life, and was glad to adopt any scheme which promised to rid me of the detestable professions for which I was destined by my parents. But would they accede to my wish? I expressed my doubts to my uncle : he squinted at me a look of anger, as much as to say, "So you question my influence with your father and mother?" In a trice he was closeted with the former, and laid the proposal before him—no more anticipating a refusal, than to be disobeyed by his own corporal on parade. He did not know the old lawyer, who pointblank objected to the scheme. I know not how my uncle looked on this occasion; I have no doubt it was very grim. High words, it is certain, ensued between them. The Colonel's notions of military discipline were too strict to enable him to digest any opposition to his wishes. I was in the next room trembling for

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