Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In GeneralLever, Charles
General
Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General
Lever, Charles
Biography -- Humor; Essays; Italy -- Description and travel
Now, let people say what they may, it is by no means easy to invent a
new line of life; and even if you should, there are scores of people
ready to start up and seize on your discovery; and as I write these
lines I am by no means sure that to-morrow will not see some other
Cornelius O’Dowd inviting the public to a feast of wisdom and
life-knowledge, with perhaps a larger stock than my own of “things not
generally known.” I will disparage no man’s wares. There is, I feel
assured, a market for us all. My rivals, or my imitators, whichever you
like to call them, may prove superior to me; they maybe more ingenious,
more various, more witty, or more profound; but take my word for it,
bland Header, there is always something in the original tap, whether
the liquor be Harvey sauce or L.L. whisky, and such is mine. You are, in
coming to me, frequenting the old house; and if I could only descend to
it, I could print you more testimonials to success than Mr Morrison’s
of the pills, or the other man of cod-liver oil, but I scorn to give the
names, imparted as they were in secret gratitude. One only trick of
the trade I will condescend to--it is to assure you that you had need
to beware of counterfeits, and that no O’Dowderies are genuine except
signed by me.
My heart is broke with requests for my autograph. Will a sympathising
public accept the above--which, of course, will be immediately
photographed.
CORNELIUS O’DOWD
MYSELF.
Bland Reader,--If you ever look into the Irish papers--and I hope
you are not so exclusive regarding them as is Mr Cobden with the
‘Times’--you will see that, under the title, “Landed Estates Court,
County Mayo,” Judge Dobbs has just sold the town and lands of
Kilmuray-nabachlish, Ballaghy, and Gregnaslattery, the property of
Cornelius O’Dowd, Esq. of Dowd’s Folly, in the same county.
Now the above-recited lands, measuring seven hundred and fourteen acres,
two roods, and eleven perches, statute measure, were mine, and I am the
Cornelius O’Dowd, Esq., referred to in the same paragraph.
Though it is perfectly true that, what between mortgages, settlement
claims, and bonds, neither my father nor myself owned these lands any
more than we did the island of Jamaica, it was a great blow to me to be
sold out; for, somehow or other, one can live a long time in Ireland on
parchment--I mean on the mere documents of an estate that has long
since passed away; but if you come once to an open sale and Judge Dobbs,
there’s an end of you, and you’ll not get credit for a pair of shoes the
day after.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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