O'Leary

“ It appeared that O'Leary, much more alive to the imperative necessity of avoiding detection by his sposa, than of involving himself with the police, had thrown out most dark and mysterious hints in the hotel as to the reason of his residence at Paris; fully impressed with the idea that, to be a good Pole, he need only talk "revolutionary;" devote to the powers below, all kings, czars, and kaisers; weep over the wrongs of his nation; wear rather seedy habiliments, and smoke profusely. ”

“ At the entrance below, as O’Leary was passing curiously out, he caught him with a sudden restraining clutch and a low admonition. Then he lit a match and studied the row of mail-boxes in the vestibule.
“No, no; that’s all right,” he said at last. “Old cards, all of them. No changes here.” He blew out the match and looked back at the stairs lost in the dimness of the hall light. “Uncanny, isn’t it? Anything might happen there. All right, now. Out, and turn straight toward Amsterdam Avenue.”
“As you say,” said O’Leary, struck by the restrained excitement in the other’s voice and gesture. ”

“ O’Leary; and, as he is destined to occupy some place in the history of these Confessions, I may, perhaps, be permitted to do so at more length than his intrinsic merit at first sight might appear to warrant.
Mr. O’Leary was, and I am induced to believe is, a particularly short, fat, greasy-looking gentleman, with a head as free from phrenological development as a billiard-ball, and a countenance which, in feature and colour, nearly resembled the face of a cherub, carved in oak, as we see them in old pulpits.
Short as is his stature, his limbs compose the least part of it. ”

“ O’Leary, I became a kind of moral amphibia, with powers to sustain life in two distinct and opposite elements—now brushing my way among frieze-coated farmers, trainers, dealers, sharpers, and stablemen; now floating on the surface of a politer world, where the topics of conversation took a different range, and were couched in a very different vocabulary. ”

“ Sir—A lately-arrived traveller in these parts brings me intelligence, that a work is announced for publication by you, under the title of ‘The Loiterings of Arthur O’Leary,’ containing his opinions, notions, dreamings, and doings during several years of his life, and in various countries. Now this must mean me, and I should like to know what are a man’s own, if his adventures are not? His ongoings, his ‘begebenheiten,’ as the Germans call them, are they not as much his, as his—what shall I say; his flannel waistcoat or his tobacco-pipe? ”

“ Now, I am free to confess that few men have less hope to win the world by deeds of horsemanship than Arthur O’Leary. I have ever looked upon it as a kind of presumption in me to get into the saddle. I have regarded my taking the reins as a species of duplicity on my part—a tacit assumption that I had any sort of control oyer the beast. ”

“ I was standing a little in the rear of O’Leary, and thus was partially hidden from observation.
Stepping on one side, and extending his hand towards me, O’Leary said, “Allow me, Mr. Hooker, to introduce you to a gentleman from England, with whom I believe you are well acquainted.”
Making an effort to appear calm and unconscious of danger, the swindler deliberately disowned all knowledge of me.
Looking at me, and then turning to O’Leary, he replied, “I do not know the gentleman. He is a perfect stranger to me.” ”

“ Trevanion," said O'Leary, "I am half afraid of this disguise of mine. I sometimes think I am not like a Pole; and if she should discover me"—
"No fear of that in the world; your costume is perfect, your beard unexceptionable. ”

“ At the head of this distinguished order stood the illustrious Father O'Leary, the Catholic Dean Swift of his time, the champion of peace, and the eloquent preacher of Christian charity. His noble works live to attest his fitness to counsel his country for her good, while his brilliant wit kept up her reputation for that splendid gift which penal statutes can neither give nor take away. ”

“ THE COURIER'S PASSPORT.
A second night succeeded the long dreary day of the diligence, and the only one agreeable reflection arose in the feeling that every mile travelled, was diminishing the chance of pursuit, and removing me still further from that scene of trouble and annoyance that was soon to furnish gossip for Paris—under the title of "The Affaire O'Leary." ”

“ But a moment’s pounding convinced him that the studio was unoccupied, and he turned to the opposite room, which lay next to his, and rapped on it as though to summon forth a spirit.
The door was presently opened, and the figure of a young woman appeared.
“My name’s King O’Leary,” he said desperately, taking off his hat. “I’m looking for some mortal being, man, woman or child, who’s as plumb lonely as I am, to go out and help me through this night. I’m not a thug or a pickpocket, and I’m not fresh. ”

“ Adieu, then, to Spas and their visitors! The sick are seldom the pleasantest company; the healthy at such places are rarely the safest.
‘You are going, Mr. O’Leary?’ said a voice from a window opposite the hotel, as my luggage was lifted into a fiacre, I looked up. It was the youth who had lost so deeply at the Cursaal. ”

“ O'Leary Charges the Mob
"You may easily suppose," began Mr. O'Leary, "that the unhappy termination of my first passion served as a shield to me for a long time against my unfortunate tendencies towards the fair; and such was really the case. I never spoke to a young lady for three years after, without a reeling in my head, so associated in my mind was love and sea-sickness. However, at last what will not time do. It was about four years from the date of this adventure, when I became so, from oblivion of my former failure, as again to tempt my fortune. ”

“ Butler, in his Historical Memoirs, describes O'Leary's person and mode of argument thus:—
"The appearance of Father O'Leary was simple. In his countenance there was a mixture of goodness, solemnity, and drollery, which fixed every eye that beheld it. No one was more generally loved or revered; no one less assuming or more pleasing in his manner. ”

“ O’Leary, and I have more than once witnessed the triumph of his homely manner and blunt humour over the more polished and well-bred taste of his competitors for favour; and what might have been the limit to such success, heaven alone can tell, if it were not that he laboured under a counter-balancing infirmity, sufficient to have swamped a line-of-battle ship itself. It was simply this—a most unfortunate propensity to talk of the wrong place, person, or time, in any society he found himself ”

“ On Father O'Leary's arrival in London he was anxiously sought after by his countrymen residing in that capital, who all felt gratified by every opportunity which offered itself, of paying respect to one who had done so much honor to religion and their country. ”

“ O'Leary's philosophy' was religion. I now know better what you meant, for I have been gossiping about you. The best point you make is—yourself. I know what you have been, what you have done, and how sadly you have suffered. Doesn't your religion demand too much—resignation? Does a God of Justice demand that we tamely submit to injustice? I am not saying this to be personal, or to pain you, but everyone seems to wonder at your resignation to injustice. Why should such a fault be in the Church you think so perfect?"
The priest looked at Mark with kindly and almost merry eyes. ”

“ Just then we turned our eyes mechanically towards the pile of manuscript at our elbow, and could not help admiring the philosophy with which he spoke of condemning to the flames the fruit of our labour. Still it was evident, that Mr. O’Leary’s was no brutem fulmen, but very respectable and downright thunder; and that in fact we should soon be, where, however interesting it may make a young lady, it by no means suits an elderly gentleman to be, viz.—in Chancery. ”

“ Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave; ”

“ This he represented so strongly, that for the first time I began to perceive the train of ill consequences that must inevitably result, and promised most faithfully to be guided by any counsel he might feel disposed to give me.
"Ah! what a pity," said O'Leary, "it is not my case. It's very little trouble it would cost any one to break off a match for me. I had always a most peculiar talent for those things.
"Indeed!" said Trevanion. "Pray, may we know your secret? for, perhaps, ere long we may have occasion for its employment." ”

“ O’Leary,’ said Laura, in the easy tone of one who asked for information’s sake, ‘what are your plans here; for up to this moment I only perceive that we have been increasing the distance between us and Rochepied.’
‘Quite true,’ said I; ‘but you know we agreed it was impossible to hope to find our way back through the forest. Every allée here has not only its brother, but a large family, so absolutely alike no one could distinguish between them; we might wander for weeks without extricating ourselves.’
‘I know all that,’ said she somewhat pettishly ”

“ O'Leary and some others of the rioters—among whom I rejoiced to find my cousin did not figure. If I were to judge from his disordered habiliments and scarred visage, Mr. O'Leary's resistance to the constituted authorities must have been a vigorous one, and the drollery of his appearance was certainly not decreased by his having lost the entire brim of his hat—the covering of his head bearing, under these distressing circumstances, a strong resemblance to a saucepan. ”

“ I saw that he was dressed as if for the road, and looking paler and more agitated than usual.
‘O’Leary,’ said he, in a tremulous voice, ‘I am come to place in your hands the highest trust a man can repose in another. Am I certain of your friendship?’ I shook his hand in silence, and he went on. ‘I must leave Brussels to-night, secretly. A political affair, in which the peace of Europe is involved, has just come to my knowledge; the Government here will do their best to detain me; orders are already given to delay me at the frontier, perhaps send me back to the capital ”

“ O’Connell had called the Irish peasantry the finest peasantry upon earth, and his heirs found it impossible to separate patriotism and flattery. Again and again John O’Leary would return to this, and I have heard him say, ‘I think it probable that the English national character is finer than ours, but that does not make me want to be an Englishman.’ I have often heard him defend Ireland against one charge or another, and he was full of knowledge, but the patriotism he had sacrificed so much for marred neither his justice nor his scholarship. ”

“ Kerry O'Leary was, then, the only one who remained; and they who know the intimacy to which old servants, long conversant with the fortunes of the family, and deemed faithful, because, from utter inutility, they are attached to the house that shelters them, are admitted in Irish households, will not be surprised at the choice of the confidant. ”

“ O’Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student there was drawn into the “Young Ireland” party mainly by the poems of Thomas Davis. ”

“ THE DUEL.
Mr. O’Leary Imagines Himself Kilt
Mr. O’Leary had scarcely concluded the narrative of his second adventure, when the grey light of the breaking day was seen faintly struggling through the half-closed curtains, and apprising us of the lateness of the hour.
“I think we shall just have time for one finishing flask of Chambertin,” said O’Leary, as he emptied the bottle into his glass.
“I forbid the bans, for one,” cried Trevanion. “We have all had wine enough, considering what we have before us this morning; and besides you are not aware it is now past four o’clock. ”

“ Which was exactly the thing King O’Leary did, with a shrug of his shoulders, despite the protestations of all his friends.
“I’m down and out, King,” she said, by way of excuse. “You’re the only real man I know. ”

“ It is certainly admitted by even O'Leary's panegyrists that at the period of the Convention of 1783 delicate overtures, which they assume he rejected, were made to him; but the magnanimous words supposed to have been used by O'Leary when parleying with his tempter rest on no authority whatever, and some will be disposed to suspect that a colour is imparted to the overtures more presentable to general readers than the naked truth, whatever it was. ”

“ O'Leary excited should prevent the other players from betting.
"Perd," said O'Leary, "again. Divil another song you sing than 'perd,' and I'm not quite clear you're not cheating all the while—only, God help you if you are!"
As he so said, the head of a huge black-thorn stick was half protruded across the table, causing renewed mirth; for, among other regulations, every cane, however trifling, is always demanded at the door; and thus a new subject of astonishment arose as to how he had succeeded in carrying it with him into the salon. ”