O'Toole

“ I'd like to know."
"Don't ye see our feet are all here together in the middle, and not for the life of us can we each tell our own. You see if one of us gets up he don't know what pair of feet to take with him."
O'Toole was never so ready to laugh before in his life, but he thought: [105]
"Now's me chance to get the house and garden before Giblin, the mason, comes round"; so he looked very grave and said: "I suppose it is hard to tell one man's feet from another's when they're all there in a heap, but I think I can help you as I have many a time before. ”

“ Indeed, the scene enacted between the mayor and the major would have become extremely affecting but for Alderman O'Toole, who, being a man of much understanding, proposed that they seal their friendship with a little brandy and water. Neither having any scruples in the matter, they filled their glasses with much pomp and circumstance. "And now, gentlemen," said Mr. Alderman O'Toole, "I propose the health of your honors together; for barring General Pierce, greater men never lived, as myself knows." ”

“ Wogan paced up and down the road, while he listened for O'Toole's return, and that thought cheated the time for him. At last he heard very faintly the sound of galloping hoofs below him on the road. He ran back to Gaydon.
"It might be a courier to arrest us. If I shout, drive fast as you can to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Italy."
He hurried down the road and was hailed by O'Toole.
"I have it," said he. Wogan turned and ran by O'Toole's stirrup to the carriage.
"The landlady has a good conscience and sleeps well," said O'Toole. "I found the house dark and the doors shut. ”

“ I, with equal politeness, recurred to the Irish great world: we fastened together upon Lord O’Toole, who took us to Dublin Castle; and I began to express my regret that I had not yet been at the Irish court, and that I had not earlier in life made myself of political consequence.
“Ambition,” said I, “might help to keep a man awake and alive; all common pleasures have long since ceased to interest me—they really cannot make me stir.” ”

“ He saw the march and countermarch of events in the lives of the people tramping on the sidewalks below his office window, saw in his mind the miners of the Pennsylvania village coming down from the hills to disappear below the ground, looked at the girls hurrying through the swinging doors of department stores in the early morning, wondering which of them would presently sit idling with toothpicks in O'Toole's and waited for the word or the stir on the surface of that sea of humanity that would be a sign to him. ”

“ A man was sent below and presently he came back with a bag of ship’s biscuit which he tossed over the side into the boat. O’Toole’s lashings were cast adrift as he stood in the mizzen channels, and he was shoved into her. A man let go the painter, forward, and, before the second mate could turn around, he was adrift and going slowly astern. ”

“ Ye spoke a while ago about my doing you a civil turn—let this poor fellow free, and I’ll do ye twenty more, if you’ll only put me in the way. But if ye’re baste enough to murder him—mona bin diaoul!—the next time you’re in a skrimmage, and tumble over an ould tree, may the divil pick ye up for Mark Antony O’Toole. ”

“ We are few, but in that lies our one hope. They will never look for four men, but for many. Four men travelling to the shrine of Loretto with the Pope's passport may well stay at Innspruck and escape a close attention."
"I am ready," O'Toole repeated.
"But we shall not start to-night. There's the passport to be got, a plan to be arranged."
"Oh, there's a plan," said O'Toole. "To be sure, there's always a plan." And he sat down again heavily, as though he put no faith in plans.
Misset and Gaydon drew their chairs closer to Wogan's and instinctively lowered their voices to the tone of a whisper. ”

“ He was the wisest of the bunch on the cattle business. So I stowed away my consolation, and made out to forget comparing Colorado with God's country.
About three times a week this Irishman I told you of—name O'Toole—comes bulgin' in. When he was sober he talked minin' high, wide, and handsome. When he was drunk he pounded both fists on the bar and yelled for action, tryin' to get Dutchy on the peck.
“God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!” he yells about six times “Say, do you hear?”
“Sure,” says Dutchy, calm as a milk cow, “sure, I hears ye!” ”

“ O'Toole?' The old man paused, drew himself up, lifted his hat, made his courtly bow, and answered, 'O'Toole salutes Arne.' I can recall nothing more picturesque than that majestic old gentleman and his dog, both remnants of a bygone age. Bruno was rough, but not long-coated, very grave, observant, enduring every one, very fond of children, playing with themPage 119 gently, but only crouching and fawning on his master; 'and that,' O'Toole would say, 'is a proof of my royal blood.' I could fill a volume with memoirs of that fine old man. ”

“ But O’Toole didn’t laugh. He appeared thoughtful for some moments, and then said, with great earnestness: “Maybe I am, Mr. Gore, but is it right for th’ owld man to say it? Is it right for a man who’s had a good income and a handsome wife t’ blackguard a poor divil av a mate because he can’t have either, and say that it is his own fault? No, Mr. Gore, I spake for th’ whole crowd av poor divils, like us, what no dacent woman’ll{94} take up with. You may not be a bright man, Mr. Gore, savin’ your prisence, but, by th’ Prophet, I give ye th’ credit av being a just one. ”

“ I then took out my purse, in which I still had nearly twenty guineas. I took ten of them. “Mrs McShane, I must leave you in charge of my portmanteau, which you may forward by-and-by, when you hear of my safety. If I should not be so fortunate, the money is better in your hands than in the hands of those who will murder me. Kathleen, God bless you! you are a good girl, and Corny O’Toole will be a happy man if he knows your value.” ”

“ Of the Mike O’Toole Ataociation
At Kelly’s Casino, Whitestone, L. I.
But though Mr. Henry Hightower was the only one who could see, every one could hear. For a moment there was intense silence. A quiver like an electric shock ran through the throng. Then Dan Murphy leaped to his feet and started for the door.
“It’s O’Toole!” he shouted. “Come on, boys!”
Immediately the hall was in an uproar. The door was jammed by the sudden onslaught of struggling, pushing humanity. James, on the edge of the platform, was shouting something that nobody heard. ”

“ O’Toole’s step sounded loudly on the deck overhead, and the creaking of a brace sheave, when the slight swell made the ship roll, sounded loud and distinct.
It was four bells in the midwatch when I heard an exclamation from the second mate. At first I thought he was talking to the men in his watch, who usually lay, or{173} rather sat, in a group abaft the deck-house during the calm weather. With one on the t’gallant fo’castle as lookout and another at the wheel, there were ten men left with nothing to do but keep awake. ”

“ O’Toole I was not so certain about, but I made up my mind to try him. So I went with him up the dirty street to Garnett’s favourite haunts in the neighbourhood of the Battery.
As we walked along the old sailor told how he had been overpowered along with the rest of the crew and guard on the Countess of Warwick, and how the convicts had taken to the boats after setting fire to the ship and leaving the whole ship’s company to burn.
One man had finally burned himself clear, and while badly injured had managed to clear one of his comrades. ”

“ Poor Larry O'Toole! We met, years afterwards, in a remote mining-camp. He ventured into the Low Country beyond the Murchison Range at the wrong season, and contracted fever. In the delirium which supervened he blew his brains out. Larry had a brother, Edmund, who had been a sailor, and who joined Butler's Horse in the Zulu War. He gained the Victoria Cross the day before Ulundi. Together with the late Lord William Beresford ("Bill," as he liked to be called, alliteratively ) he saved a wounded man from the spears of the enemy. ”

“ O’Toole bawled for all hands, and, as I turned, he and a dozen men sprang into the main rigging and up they went to secure the maintopsail.
Young Brown kept with the men on deck and helped wherever he could lend a hand, for, as he was stout and active, his weight on a down-haul or clewline was equal to any. ”

“ Having accommodated the we a sufficient number of times to satisfy us that he had the whole city nicely tucked away in the pocket of his shabby coat, he turned round to introduce Alderman Barney O'Toole, who, as a man and a gentleman, could do more off hand fighting than any other man in the board, and was the fourth of the flabby men. ”

“ With the exception of the big-shouldered German sailor in my watch, the men had offered no resistance whatever. This one man had made some show of resistance when cornered under the t’gallant fo’castle, but he was quickly overpowered.
O’Toole and myself were strong men, but what did that count for in such a crowd. Crojack and Brown had defended the quarter-deck until they were shot down and overpowered. They were but two against fifty.
I knew that every man of our crew who would not join would walk the plank long before daylight. ”

“ Not even a skysail halyard had been touched for a week, so O’Toole lounged carelessly fore and aft on the quarter-deck, stopping at every turn when he reached the skipper to see if he had anything to say.
In good weather Captain Green’s discipline was not too strict, and he would often talk to the officer on watch. “I was thinking,” said he, without taking his eyes from the horizon-line, “about this transportation or emigration of souls you hear so much about nowadays. You know what I mean,—one person’s soul getting the weather-gauge of another’s ”

“ It is conceivable that many successive evenings devoted to the society of Shan Daly, Paddy O’Toole, Kit Rafferty—otherwise ‘Kit the Rake’—also to that of the big barrel hidden away under the furze-bushes in the old villa, are not exactly conducive to a young man’s steadiness of hand or his business-like habits. ”

“ As the weather had been clear and wind light enough for skysails, I took no precautions to fix myself firmly in my bunk. I was, therefore, astonished to awake suddenly just in time to prevent myself from falling to the deck as the ship gave a sharp lurch and brought up with a jerk. Four bells struck, and I found I had only slept two hours, so, jamming myself in firmly with a blanket, I tried to sleep again.
I heard O’Toole’s footsteps on the deck overhead, and now and then an oath when he halted at the break of the poop. ”

“ So'll the man be that tries to ride her. Say, I seen that copper-colored, china-eyed, she-son of a Kansas cyclone put Bull O'Toole so far to the bad once that his return ticket expired long before he got back. I tell you, kid, she's outlaw. ”

“ Nangle, my suffragan,’ says Archbishop Browne, ‘showed the King’s broad seal for justifying of his authority, MacWilliam little esteemed it, but threw it away and vilipended the same.’ The plan was that O’Toole, to whom Gerald promised to restore Powerscourt, should harass the Pale from the south, while James Fitzjohn of Desmond, with some Scotch mercenaries, attacked it from the west and O’Neill from the north. ”

“ We told them that if they would bring us some supplies we would wait, and pay them well in gold. The promise of gold served as a bait to secure some concession. After some parleying it was agreed that O'Toole should go on shore in their canoe, be allowed to purchase some provisions, and return in two hours. The bucaneer thought the time too short, but I insisted that if O'Toole were not brought back in two hours, I would speak the first gunboat I met, and return with her and have their nest of freebooters broken up. ”

“ Such cases as that of Tirlogh O’Toole show that he knew how to be both gracious and just. On the other hand, the ferocity of his character was exemplified by his treatment of the five Geraldine brethren. He was a thoroughly selfish man, but in matters which did not concern him personally he had many of the qualifications of a statesman. Had England remained in communion with Rome, his tentative and patient policy might have succeeded in Ireland. ”

“ Sure no harm can be done to the hides for making leather, so I'll give ye a shilling apiece, and that's better than nothing. Twenty-one bright shillings going to the fair may make yer fortune." It seemed neck or nothing with the McAndrews, and they accepted the offer, thanking O'Toole for his generosity, and helped him drive the cows into his field. ”

“ By Gor, I thought all the world, far and near, heerd o' King O'Toole—well, well, but the darkness of mankind is ontellible! Well, sir, you must know, as you didn't hear it afore, that there was a king, called King O'Toole, who was [Pg 225] a fine ould king in the ould ancient times, long ago; and it was him that owned the churches in the early days. The king, you see, was the right sort; he was the rale boy, and loved sport as he loved his life, and huntin' in partic'lar; and from the risin' o' the sun, up he got, and away he wint over the mountains beyant afther the deer ”

“ They seem to adopt for their creed the words of the old song,—
“The King may make a Baron bold, Or an Earl of any fool, sir, But with all his power, and all his gold He can never make an O'Toole, sir.”
“These are very allowable feelings when sustained by wealth and fortune,” said O'Reilly, quietly.
“I verily believe their influence is greater in adversity,” said Nalty; “they seem to have a force of consolation that no misery can rob them of. ”