“ BY WILLIAM CARLETON THERE never was a greater-souled or doughtier tailor than little Neal Malone. Though but four feet four in height, he paced the earth with the courage and confidence of a giant; nay, one would have imagined that he walked as if he feared the world itself was about to give way under him. Let no one dare to say in future that a tailor is but the ninth part of a man. That reproach has been gloriously taken away from the character of the cross-legged corporation by Neal Malone. ”

“ The schoolmaster and he, whenever they could steal a moment, met and sympathised together. Mr. O’Connor, however, bore up somewhat better than Neal. The latter was subdued in heart and in spirit, thoroughly, completely, and intensely vanquished. His features became sharpened by misery, for a termagant wife is the whetstone on which all the calamities of a henpecked husband are painted by the devil. He no longer strutted as he was wont to do, he no longer carried a cudgel as if he wished to wage a universal battle with mankind. He was now a married man. ”

“ We always wait to see the Old Year out and the New Year in. Come, Mr. Hayes, it’s almost luncheon-time,” she added, glancing at her watch; and they turned back toward the house, which was just visible through the leafless trees.
Harold walked at her side in silence. He had heard a ghost-story, but the words he had hoped to speak that day were still unuttered.
Loud were the pleadings, when the little ones’ bedtime came, that they might be allowed to sit up to see the Old Year die; but Mrs. Connolly was inexorable. The very young ones were sent off to bed at their usual hour. ”

“ They had not sat many minutes when a wild, unearthly cry was heard without.
“The banshee again,” said Moya, faintly. Jack O’Malley’s soul sank within him; Harry started up and seized the blunderbuss; Jack caught his arm. “No, no, Harry, you shall not; sit down; there’s no fear—nothing will happen us.”
Harry sat down, but still gripped the blunderbuss, and Jack lit his tobacco-pipe, whilst the old woman was on her knees, striking her breast, and repeating her prayers with great vehemence. ”

“ And at about two o’clock in the afternoon, barefooted, ragged, fevered, and agitated, Shamus mingled with the turbid human stream, that roared and chafed over the as restless and as evanescent stream which buffeted the arches of old London Bridge. In a situation so novel to him, so much more extraordinary in the reality than his anticipation could have fancied, the poor and friendless stranger felt overwhelmed. ”

“ Do you think that, if you abandoned all thoughts of a wife, you would get heroic again—that is, would you take once more to the love of fighting?”
“There is no doubt but I would,” said the tailor; “if I miss the wife, I’ll kick up such a dust as never was seen in the parish, an’ you’re the first man that I’ll lick. But now that I’m in love,” he continued, “sure, I ought to look out for the wife.”
“Ah, Neal,” said the schoolmaster, “you are tempting destiny; your temerity be, with all its melancholy consequences, upon your own head.” ”

“ O’Connor, having thus expressed himself, departed; and Neal stood, with the cudgel in his hand, looking at the door out of which he passed, with an expression of fierceness, contempt, and reflection strongly blended on the ruins of his once heroic visage.
Many a man has happiness within his reach if he but knew it. The tailor had been hitherto miserable because he pursued a wrong object. The schoolmaster, however, suggested a train of thought upon which Neal now fastened with all the ardour of a chivalrous temperament. ”

“ We wish it were in our power to draw a veil, or curtain, or blind of some description, over the remnant of the tailor’s narrative that is to follow; but as it is the duty of every faithful historian to give the secret causes of appearances which the world in general does not understand, so we think it but honest to go on, impartially and faithfully, without shrinking from the responsibility that is frequently annexed to truth.
For the first three days after matrimony Neal felt like a man who had been translated to a new and more lively state of existence. ”

“ Look at me, Neal, how wasted, fleshless, and miserable I am. You know how my garments have shrunk in, and what a solid man I was before marriage. Neal, pause, I beseech you; otherwise you stand a strong chance of becoming a nonentity like myself.”
“I don’t care what I become,” said the tailor; “I can’t think that you’d be so unreasonable as to expect that any o’ the Malones should pass out o’ the world widout either bein’ bate or marrid. Have reason, Mr. O’Connor, an’ if you can help me to the wife I promise to take in your coat the next time for nothin’.” ”

“ He entered the region of these things before his shadow had shrunk to its briefest; for not so very far beyond Kilmacrone the smooth floor of the big bog crumples itself into crusts and ridges, as if it had caught the trick from its bounding ocean; and the nearer it comes to the shore the higher it heaves itself, until at last it is cut short by a sheer cliff wall, with storm-stunted brambles and furzes cowering along the edge, fathoms above a base-line of exuberant weed and foam. ”

“ For twenty-five years I have given instruction in three branches, namely, philosophy, knowledge, and mathematics. I am also well versed in matrimony, and I declare that, upon my misery and by the contents of all my afflictions, it is my solemn and melancholy opinion that, if you marry a wife, you will, before three months pass over your concatenated state, not have a single complaint to make touching a superabundance of peace or tranquillity or a love of fighting.”
“Do you mane to say that any woman would make me afeard?” said the tailor, deliberately rising up and getting his cudgel. ”

“ Jack O’Malley was a Roman Catholic—a square, stout-built, and handsome fellow, with a pleasant word for every one, and full of that gaiety, vivacity, and nonchalance for which the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland are so particularly distinguished. He was now about forty-five years of age, sternly attached to the dogmas of his religion, and always remarkable for his revolutionary and anti-British principles. He was brave as a lion, and never quailed before a man ”

“ Neal, however, was gifted with the heart of an Irishman, and scorned caution as the characteristic of a coward; he had, as it appeared, abandoned all design of fighting, but the courage still adhered to him even in making love. He consequently conducted the siege of Biddy Neil’s heart with a degree of skill and valor which would not have come amiss to Marshal Gerald at the siege of Antwerp. Locke or Dugald Stewart, indeed, had they been cognisant of the tailor’s triumph, might have illustrated the principle on which he succeeded; as to ourselves, we can only conjecture it. ”

“ But Shamus felt certain that it would be a race between him and his uncle for the treasure that lay under the friar’s tombstone. His simple nature supplied no stronger motive for a pursuit on the part of a man whose life now lay in the breath of his mouth. Full of his conviction, however, Shamus saw he had not a moment to lose until the roof of his shed in the old abbey again sheltered him. ”

“ Shamus would, however, recur, during these entrancing aberrations, to his more real causes for terror; and he knew not, and to this day cannot distinctly tell, whether he waked or slept, when a new circumstance absorbed his attention. The moon struck fully, under his propped roof, upon the carved slab he had appropriated as a hearthstone; and turning his eye to the spot, he saw the semblance of a man advanced in years, though not very old, standing motionless, and very steadfastly regarding him. ”

“ Of course he had his views on the Irish question. Every American newspaper reader is cheerfully satisfied with the conviction that the Celtic race on its native sod has no real faults. A constitutional antipathy to rent may exist, but that is a national foible which, owing doubtless to some peculiarity of the climate, is almost praiseworthy in Ireland, though elsewhere regarded as hardly respectable. At any rate, with the consciousness that he was about to come face to face with the much-talked-of boycott, Harold’s spirits rose, and as he read Polly Connolly’s message they rose still higher. ”

“ No wonder, therefore, that Neal’s blood should cry out against the cowardice of his calling; no wonder that he should be an epitome of all that was valorous and heroic in a peaceable man, for we neglected to inform the reader that Neal, though “bearing no base mind,” never fought any man in his own person. That, however, deducted nothing from his courage. If he did not fight it was simply because he found cowardice universal. No man would engage him; his spirit blazed in vain; his thirst for battle was doomed to remain unquenched, except by whisky, and this only increased it. ”

“ Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, and that his mother was, as Paddy put it, “comin’ round to the notion gradual, like an ould goat grazin’ round its tetherin’ stump.” His hopes, indeed, were so completely in the ascendant that he summed up his most serious uneasiness when he said to himself: “She’ll do right enough, no fear, or I’d niver think of it, if Thady was just somethin’ steadier. But sure he might happen to git a thrifle more wit yet; he’s no great age to spake of.” ”

“ God knows it is difficult to form a correct opinion upon a situation so parodoxical as Neal’s was. To be reduced to skin and bone by the downright friendship of the world was, as the sagacious reader will admit, next to a miracle. We appeal to the conscience of any man who finds himself without an enemy whether he be not a greater skeleton than the tailor; we will give him fifty guineas provided he can show a calf to his leg. We know he could not; for the tailor had none, and that was because he had not an enemy. No man in friendship with the world ever has calves to his legs. ”

“ Jack O’Malley and his friend Harry lived some years after. Their friendship still continued undiminished; like “Tam O’Shanter” and “Souter Johnny,” they still continued to love each other like “a very brither”; and like that jovial pair, also, our two comrades were often “fou for weeks thegither,” and often over their cruiskeen would they laugh at their strange adventure with the banshee. It is now, however, all over with them too; their race is run, and they are now “tenants of the tomb.” ”

“ I once expressed the shadow of a doubt about twelve years ago, but ever since I have abandoned even doubting. That doubt was the last expiring effort at maintaining my domestic authority—but I suffered for it.”
“Well,” said Neal, “if you have patience, I’ll tell you what afflicts me from beginnin’ to endin’.”
“I will have patience,” said Mr. O’Connor; and he accordingly heard a dismal and indignant tale from the tailor.
“You have told me that fifty times over,” said Mr. O’Connor, after hearing the story. “Your spirit is too martial for a pacific life. ”

“ To have the whole world in friendship with a man is beyond doubt an affliction. Not to have the face of a single enemy to look upon would decidedly be considered a deprivation of many agreeable sensations by most people as well as by Neal Malone. Let who might sustain a loss or experience a calamity, it was a matter of indifference to Neal. ”

“ There was a patient, subdued kind of expression in his face which indicated a very fair portion of calamity; his eye seemed charged with affliction of the first water; on each side of his nose might be traced two dry channels, which, no doubt, were full enough while the tropical rains of his countenance lasted. Altogether, to conclude from appearances, it was a dead match in affliction between him and the tailor; both seemed sad, fleshless, and unthriving.
“Misther O’Connor,” said the tailor, when the schoolmaster entered, “won’t you be pleased to sit down?” ”

“ Pat looked in the desired direction, but misapprehended the object to be the western sky, where an overblown fiery rose seemed to have scattered all its petals broadcast. “Sure, that’s on’y the sun settin’ red like,” he explained, indifferently, and would have resumed his excavations if he had not been seized and hustled half-way up the cliff before he could disengage his mind from his brigades and batteries. Both heads soon bobbed up over the edge without accident; for Pat climbed like a monkey when once he had grasped the situation. ”

“ The schoolmaster’s philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, “Neal, we are both receding from the same point; you increase in flesh, whilst I, Heaven help me, am fast diminishing.”
The tailor received these remarks with very boisterous mirth, whilst Mr. O’Connor simply shook his head and looked sadly upon his limbs, now shrouded in a superfluity of garments, somewhat resembling a slender thread of water in a shallow summer stream nearly wasted away and surrounded by an unproportionate extent of channel. ”