Various

“ Man was made to be active. The hunter who roams through the forest, or climbs the rocks of the Alps, is the man who is hardy, and in the most robust health. The sailor who has been rocked by a thousand storms, and who labours day and night, is a hardy man, unless dissipation has broken his constitution. Any man of active habits is likely to enjoy good health, if he does not too frequently over-exert himself. But the student’s habits are all unnatural, and by them nature is continually cramped and restrained. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labour. ”

“ Corny advanced, somewhat puzzled whether to laugh or cry, and taking the child up with a smile, he kissed it five times—for that is the mystic number—and as he placed it once more in Rose’s arms, there was a solitary tear on its cheek.
“Arra, go an’ kiss your wife, man alive, an’ tell her to have a good heart, an’ to be as kind to all her fellow-creatures as God has been to her this night. It isn’t upon this world the heart ought to be fixed, for we see how small a thing an’ how short a time can take us out of it.” ”

“ This consciousness gives to his hostility a sneaking and timid character, and induces him to confine himself in the matter of retaliation to the facetious joke and sly insinuation. On more open warfare he dare not venture. The teetotaller is thus the assailing party: he takes and keeps the field manfully, and with bold front and loud voice dares the toper to the combat. ”

“ Alas! the serpents were now coiled about him—the poison was rilling through his heart! Alas for him! he knew too well which road he had chosen—where he was—and what he must undergo—for eternity—for eternity!
With an anguish, with an agony, with a despair, that language cannot even faintly pourtray, he uplifted his withered arms towards heaven, clasped his hands, and cried aloud, O! give me back, give me back my youth! O! my father, lead me once more to the Cross-road, that I may once more choose, and this time choose with foreknowledge! ”

“ But Vindication is poor, and dry, and cold, and repulsive. It rests in detections and distinctions, explanations to be given to the meaning of a hundred phrases, and the setting right whatever belongs to the circumstances of time and place. What bystander will bend himself to the drudgery of thoroughly appreciating it? Add to which, that all men are endowed with the levelling principle, as with an instinct. ”

“ One night, about ten or twelve months after his marriage, honest Corny Keho came out to the barn, where slept his two farm servants, named Phil Hannigan and Barny Casey. He had been sitting by himself, composing his mind for a calm night’s sleep, or probably for a curtain lecture, by taking a contemplative whiff of the pipe, when the servant wench, with a certain air of hurry, importance, and authority, entered the kitchen, and informed him that Rose Moan must immediately be sent for.
“The misthress isn’t well, Masther, an’ the sooner she’s sint for, the betther. ”

“ Abhorring dissipation itself, the teetotaller naturally extends that abhorrence to its signs and symptoms. On flushed and pimpled faces he looks with aversion and distrust, but on a red nose with absolute horror. ”

“ There are great diversities of hiding-places for their consciences—many mansions in the dim prison of discontent; but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They perhaps are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are under a heavier curse even than this; they inflict torments, second only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. ”

“ The toper always carefully eschews any thing like direct and open personal contact with the enemy, in the shape of discussions on the merits of the question of abstinence. There is, in fact, nothing he so much abominates as any attempt at reasoning on the subject, where such reasoning has for its object to show the advantages of temperance or intemperance. The toper thus at all times prefers keeping out of the teetotaller’s way, and, although professing the most entire disregard of him, will at any time go a mile about to avoid him. ”

“ He deprives himself and all around him of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth that he may purchase other men’s labour, in the vain hope of adding happiness to his own.
He omits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice. ”

“ Slander and Vindication.—Vindication in some cases partakes of the same qualities that Homer ascribes to prayer. Slander, “strong, and sound of wing, flies through the world, afflicting men;” but Vindication, lame, wrinkled, and imbecile, for ever seeking its object, and never obtaining it, follows after, only to make the person in whose behalf it is employed more completely the scorn of mankind. The charge against him is heard by thousands, the vindication by few. ”

“ The hero of the world is the man that makes a bustle—the man that makes the road smoke under his chaise-and-four—the man that raises a dust about him—the man that ravages or devastates empires. But what is the real labour of this man, compared with that of a silent sufferer? ”

“ Nor, in the matter of anecdote, is the teetotaller a whit behind his unregenerated brother. The two parties, in fact, carry on a war of anecdote against each other—the teetotaller’s being stories of ruin and misery resulting from dissipation—the toper’s, facetious little tales of hypocrisy and backsliding. Both collect their anecdotes with great industry, and propagate them with great zeal and diligence. ”

“ The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend—who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan—and veers, like a weathercock, to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows—can never accomplish anything great or useful. ”

“ He multiplies the chances against his own life and health by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at their fatal results.
He shuts his eyes against the volume of truth as presented by Nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation.
He interdicts the enjoyment of all other creatures, and regarding the world as his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriads on whom have been bestowed beauties and perfections. ”

“ The latter, in conscious weakness, shrinks at the sound, as do the small animals of the forest when they hear the roar of the lion; and getting out of his way as fast as he can, retires to his fastnesses, the drinking-shops, and hedges himself round with bottles and quart-pots. ”

“ While they complacently conclude themselves the victims of others, or pronounce that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds’ sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the heights of the heaven to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable ”

“ THE IRISH MIDWIFE.—Part II.
BY WILLIAM CARLETON.
The village of Ballycomaisy was as pleasant a little place as one might wish to see of a summer’s day. To be sure, like all other Irish villages, it was remarkable for a superfluity of “pigs, praties, and childre,” which being the stock in trade of an Irish cabin, it is to be presumed that very few villages either in Ireland or elsewhere could go on properly without them. ”

“ He lives on his projects: he encounters, perhaps, rough roads, incommodious inns, bad food, storms and perils; but what are these? His project, his point, the thing that has laid hold on his heart—glory—a name—consequence—pleasure—wealth—these render the man callous to the pains and efforts of the body. ”

“ Well, I brought about——Push an, dear, push an.—They’re as happy a couple now as breaks bread, any way, and that’s all they wanted.
“I’d wager a thirteen it was you did that, Rose.”
“Hut, gorsoon, hould your tongue. Sure they’re happy now, I say, whosomever did it. I named nobody, nor I take no pride to myself, Phil, out o’ sich things. Some people’s gifted above others, an’ that’s all. But, Phil?”
“Well, ma’am?”
“How does the Dandy an’ his scald of a wife agree? for, throth, I’m tould she’s nothing else.” ”

“ Is super-refinement, or circumstance from God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongeniality is appointed for discipline? ”

“ But our teetotaller not only knows all the professed, undisguised topers of his locality; he knows—much more [Pg 215] striking proof of his vigilance—every man also whose habits, although not yet sufficiently intemperate to attract the attention of any one but a teetotaller, exhibit signs and symptoms of becoming gradually worse. The tippling progress of these persons he watches with the deepest interest, and keeps himself accurately informed regarding the extent and frequency of their debauches. ”

“ Friendship, love, and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence—to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought—many more to be spoken. ”

“ She should call in one o’ those newfangled women who take out their Dispatches from the Lying-in College in Dublin below; for you see, Phil, there is sich a place there—an’ it stands to raison that there should be a Fondlin’ Hospital beside it, which there is too, they say; but, honey, what are these poor ignorant cratures but new lights, every one o’ them, that a dacent woman’s life isn’t safe wid?”
“To be sure, Mrs Moan; an’ everyone knows they’re not to be put in comparishment wid a woman like you, that knows sich a power. ”

“ Man brings upon himself a thousand calamities, as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls evil:—
He compromises every natural pleasure to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death ”

“ He forgets that to live and let live is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to his fellow creatures, but to inferior ones, to whom his moral obligations are greater, because they are more in his power. ”

“ Time runs on, and when youth and beauty vanish, a fine lady who had never entertained a thought into which an admirer did not enter, finds in herself a lamentable void.
The poorest of all family goods are indolent females. If a wife knows nothing of domestic duties beyond the parlour or the boudoir, she is a dangerous partner in these times of pecuniary uncertainty. ”

“ That a class of men should arise who would forswear the use of those exhilarating stimulants in which he himself so much delighted—that there should ever appear on the face of the earth such an ass as the man who would refuse a glass of generous liquor when offered him, is to him a thing surpassing belief; and in fact he does not, or rather will not, believe in it. He insists upon it that it is all humbug, and that its professors, the professors of teetotallism, may say what they please, but that they can and do take their drink as freely as he does ”

“ But is it thrue, Mrs Moan, that you have been brought on business to some o’ the”—here Phil looked about him cautiously, and lowered his voice to a whisper—“to some o’ the fairy women?”
“Husth, man alive—what the sorra timpted you to call them anything but the Good People? This day’s Thursday—God stand betune us an’ harm. No, Phil, I name nobody. But there was a woman, a midwife—mind, avick, that I don’t say who she was—may be I know why too, an’ may be it would be as much as my life is worth”——
“Aisey, Mrs. Moan! God presarve us! ”

“ He is, in short, determined not to believe in so monstrous a doctrine. But should conviction at any time be too strong for him, he then falls back on the consolatory belief that it cannot long prevail—that it will not, can not stand. ”

“ This intimation to Phil put feathers to his heels; for from the moment that he and Barny started, he did not once cease to go at the top of his speed. It followed as a matter of course that honest Mickey M’Sorley dressed himself and was back at Keho’s house before the family believed it possible the parties could have been there. This ceremony of getting a seventh son to shake the sick woman, in cases where difficulty or danger may be apprehended, is one which frequently occurs in remote parts of the country. ”

“ It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit—that can advance to eminence in any line. ”