William Carleton

“ To be, in the course of a few years, a bona fide priest; to possess unlimited sway over the fears and principles of the people; to be endowed with spiritual gifts to he knew not what extent; and to enjoy himself as he had an opportunity of seeing Father Finnerty and his curate do, in the full swing of convivial pleasure, upon the ample hospitality of those who, in addition to this, were ready to kiss the latchet of his shoes—were, it must be admitted, no inconsiderable motives in influencing the conduct of a person reared in an humble condition of life. ”

“ Because he spoke little, neither the usual noise nor bustle of a large family disturbed the silence of the house; every word was uttered that evening in a low tone, at once expressive of tenderness and respect. The family supper was tea, in compliment to Denis; and they all partook of it with him. Nothing humbles the mind, and gives the natural feelings their full play, so well as a struggle in life, or the appearance of its approach.
“Denis,” said the father, “the time will come when we won't have you at all among us; but, thank goodness, you'll be in a betther place.” ”

“ There was just such another goose hanging before the fire; but, you must know, the cream of the joke was, that I had been after coming from the confessional, as hungry as a man could conveniently wish himself; and seeing the brown fat goose before the fire just as that is, why my teeth, Mave, began to get lachrymose. Upon my Priesthood it was such a goose as a priest's corpse might get up on its elbow to look at, and exclaim, 'avourneen machree, it's a thousand pities that I'm not living to have a cut at you!'—ha, ha, ha! God be good to old Friar Hennessy, I have that joke from him. ”

“ Then is the goose cut up, and the farmer's distilled Latin is found to be purer and more edifying than the distillation of Maynooth.
'Drink deep, or taste not that Pierian spring, A little learning here's a dangerous thing.'
And so it is, as far as this inspiring language is concerned. A station dinner is the very pinnacle of a priest's happiness. There is the fun and frolic; then does the lemon-juice of mirth and humor come out of their reverences, like secret writing, as soon as they get properly warm. ”

“ Denis had been their pride, the privileged person among them—the individual whose talents were to throw lustre upon a nameless and unknown family; the future priest—the embryo preacher of eminence—the resistless controversialist—the holy father confessor—and, perhaps, for with that vivacity of imagination peculiar to the Irish, they could scarcely limit his exaltation—perhaps the bishop of a whole diocese. Had not the Lord Primate himself been the son of as humble a man? ”

“ I'm like that flower in one sense; I'm faded; my heart's broke.”
“No, my beloved Susan, don't say so; you're only low-spirited. Why should your heart be broke, and you in the very bloom of youth and beauty?”
“Do you remember our last meetin', Denis? Oh, how could you be so cruel then as to bid me think of marryin' another, as if I had loved you for anything but yourself? I'm but a simple girl, Denis, and know but little of the world; but if I was to live a thousand years, you would always see the sorrow that your words made me feel visible upon my countenance. I'm not angry with you, Denis ”

“ Young Denis's display of controversial talents was so remarkably precocious, that he controverted his father's statements upon all possible subjects, with a freedom from embarrassment which promised well for that most distinguished trait in a controversialist—hardihood of countenance. This delighted old Denis to the finger ends.
“Dinny, if he's spared,” he would say, “will be a credit to us all yet. The sorra one of him but's as manly as anything, and as longheaded as a four-footed baste, so he is! ”

“ My health has been ill, Denis; my strength is gone, and I feel' I am gettin' worse every day: now when you hear that I am—that I am—gone,—will you offer up the first mass you say for my pace and rest in another world? I say the first, for you know there's more virtue in a first mass than in any other. Your Susan will be then in the dust, and you may feel sorrow, but not love for her. ”

“ Yes, I command thee, Brian Buie, who sit upon the hob of my worthy and most excellent friend and parishioner, Denis O'Shaughnessy, to rise, to stand up before your spiritual superior, to walk down from it, and to tremble as if you were about to sink into the earth to the neck, but no further ”

“ Susan, hear me: I will bear all that this world can inflict; I will bear shame, ill-treatment, anger, scorn, and every harsh word that may be uttered against me; I will renounce church, spiritual power, rank, honor; I will give up father and family—all—all that this world could flatter mo with: yes, I will renounce each and all for your sake! Do not dissuade me; my mind is fixed, and no power on earth can change it.”
“Yes, Denis,” she replied calmly, “there is a power, and a weak power, too, that will change it ”

“ His silence and apprehension were imputed to the workings of a mind learnedly engaged in arranging the vast stores of knowledge with which it was so abundantly stocked; his moody picture of the bishop's brow; his reflection that he was going before so sacred a person, as a candidate for the church, with his heart yet redolent of earthly affection for Susan Connor; his apprehension that the bishop's spiritual scent might sagaciously smell it out, were all put down by the family to the credit of uncommon learning, which, as his mother observed truly, “often makes men do quare things.” ”

“ Love of learning is a conspicuous principle in an Irish peasant; and in no instance is it seen to greater advantage, than when the object of it appears in the “makins of a priest.” Among all a peasant's good and evil qualities, this is not the least amiable. How his eye will dance in his head with pride, when the young priest thunders out a line of Virgil or Homer, a sentence from Cicero, or a rule from Syntax! ”

“ Susy, don't say 'for ever.' You know that the vow you made was a rash vow. It may be set aside.”
“It was not a rash vow, Denis. I made it with a firm intention of keepin' it, and keep it I will. The Mother of God is not to be mocked, because I am weak, or choose to prefer my own will to hers.”
“But, Susy, the Church can dissolve it. You know she has power to bind and to loose. Oh, for God's sake, Susy, if you ever loved me, don't attempt to take back your promise.”
“I love you too well to destroy you, Denis. I will never stand between you and God, for that would be my crime. ”

“ Thus we go on absolving in great style, till it is time for the matutinal meal—vulgarly called breakfast; when the whiskey, eggs, toast, and tea as strong as Hercules, with ham, fowl, beef-steaks, or mutton-chops, all pour in upon us in the full tide of hospitality. ”

“ I have often said to my friends, and I now repeat it in print, that after all there is no people bound up so strongly to each other by the ties of domestic life as the Irish. On the night which preceded this joyous and important day, a spirit of silent but tender affection dwelt in every heart of the O'Shaughnessys. ”

“ In humble life you will see a married woman who cannot call her husband after his Christian name; or a husband, who, from some extraordinary restraint, cannot address his wife, except in that distant manner which the principle I allude to dictates, and habit confirms.
Denis, however, had overcome this modesty, and felt not a whit too shamefaced to arrogate to his own learning and character the most unhesitating manifestation of their deference and respect, and they soon scrupled not to pay it. ”

“ Now, Denis, we must return our promises, the time is passin', and we'll both be missed from home.”
“Susan, for the sake of my happiness, both in this world and in the next, don't take away all hope. Make me not miserable and wretched; send me not into the church a hypocrite. If you do, I will charge you with my guilt; I will charge you with the crimes of a man who will care but little what he does.”
“You will have friends, Denis; pious men, who will direct you and guide you and wean your heart from me and the world. ”

“ The father's pride, on these occasions, always prompted him to become the aggressor; but he only did this to draw out the talents of his son to more advantage. Never was man foiled with less regret than old Denis; nor did ever man more bitterly repent those little touches of vanity, which, sometimes induced him, when an opportunity of prostrating Denny arrived, to show what he could have done, by giving the son's argument an unexpected brainblow. ”

“ By and by the father receded more and more, as the son advanced in his Latin and Greek, until, at length, the encounters were only resorted to for the purpose of showing off the son.
When young Denis had reached the age of sixteen or seventeen, he was looked upon by his father and his family, as well as by all their relations in general, as a prodigy. It was amusing to witness the delight with which the worthy man would call upon his son to exhibit his talents, a call to which the son instantly attended. ”

“ The same spirit which marked all their rustic symposia presided in this; if we except a feeling of sorrow natural to his family on being separated from one they loved so affectionately. Denis, who was never deficient in warmth of feeling, could not be insensible to the love and pride with which his family had always looked upon him. Ambition, as he approached it, lost much of its fictitious glitter. A sense of sorrow, if not of remorse, for the fastidious and overbearing spirit he had manifested to them, pressed upon his heart. Pride, in fact, was expelled; nature resumed her empire over him ”

“ In addition, however, to the enjoyment of this assumption of profound learning which characterizes the young priest, a different spirit, considerably more practical, often induces him to hook in other motives. The learning of Denis O'Shaughnessy, for instance, blazed with peculiar lustre whenever he felt himself out at elbows; for the logic with which he was able to prove the connection between his erudition and a woollen-draper's shop, was, like the ignorance of those who are to be saved, invincible. ”

“ The priest and he, accompanied by the two O'Shaughnessys, passed out to the stable yard, where their horses stood. As they went, Father Finnerty whispered to O'Shaughnessy:—
“Now, Denis, is your time. Strike while the iron is hot. Don't take a penny!—don't take a fraction! Get into a passion, and swear you'll shoot him unless he accepts him as a present. If he does, all's right; he can twine the Bishop round his finger.” ”

“ The holy man, whom his flock looked upon as a being of the highest sanctity, when lit up into fun and frolic, Denis learned to estimate at his just value. He thought, besides, that a person resolved to go to heaven, had as good a chance of being saved by the direct mercy of God, as through the ministration of men, whose only spiritual advantage over himself consisted in the mere fact of being in orders. ”

“ Hem—in the morning I rise up in imagination, and after reading part of my office, I and my curate—ego et coadjutor metis—or, if I get a large parish, perhaps I and my two curates—ego et coudjutores mei—order our horses, and of a fine, calm summer morning we mount them as gracefully as three throopers. The sun is up, and of coorse the moon is down, and the glitter of the light, the sparkling of the dew, the canticles of the birds, and the melodiotis cowing of the crows in Squire Grimshaw's rookery—”
“Why, Denis, is it this parish you'll have?” ”

“ Every male infant born among them was called Dionysius; and every female one Susan, after his favorite sister. All this, to a lad like Denis, already remarkable for his vanity, was very trying; or rather, it absolutely turned his brain, and made him probably as finished a specimen of pride, self-conceit, and domineering arrogance, mingled with a kind of lurking humorous contempt for his cringing relations, as could be displayed in the person of some shallow but knavish prime minister, surrounded by his selfish sycophants, whom he encourages and despises. ”

“ His pupils, too, who were hitherto afraid to laugh aloud, on observing his countenance dilate into an expression of laughter which he could not conceal, made the roof of the house ring with their mirth.
“Silence, gintlemen,” said he; “legite, perlegite, et relegite—study, gintlemen, study—pluck the tree of knowledge, I say, while the fruit is in season. Denny O'Shaughnessy, what are you facetious for? Quid rides, Dionysi And so, Pether—is Pettier your pronomen—quo nomine gowdes? Silence, boys!—perhaps he was at Latin before, and we'll try him—quo nomine gowdes, Pethre?” ”

“ Silence, silence, till I complate my rural ideas—in some gentleman's rookery at all events; the thrush here, the blackbird there, the corn-craik chanting its varied note in another place, and so on. In the meantime we reverend sentimentalists advance, gazing with odoriferous admiration upon the prospect about us, and expatiating in the purest of Latin upon the beauties of unsophisticated nature. When we meet the peasants going out to their work, they put their hands to their hats for us ”

“ Franky, however, made an amazing progress—so very rapid, indeed, that in about three years from that day he found himself in Maynooth, and in three years more was an active curate, to whom that very teacher appeared as slavishly submissive as if he had never ridiculed his vulgarity or ungainly dimensions. Poor Frank, however, in consequence of the rapid progress he made, and of the very short interval which elapsed from the period of his commencing Latin until that of his ordination, was assigned by the people the lowest grade in learning. ”

“ It is so with our moral enjoyments. In Ireland, a very simple accession to their hopes or comforts produces an extraordinary elevation of mind, and so completely unlocks the sluices of their feelings, that every consideration is lost in the elation of the moment. At least it was so in Denis O'Shaughnessy's family upon this occasion.
No sooner had Father Finnerty received the colt, and pledged himself that Denny should have the place at Maynooth that was then vacant, than a tumultuous expression of delight burst from his family and relations, business was then thrown aside for the day ”