McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893Various
General
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
As long as he lived he spoke of the Harshaws with gratitude and
affection, and I do not believe he could have been so glad and happy
without contributing to the general enjoyment.
In the latter part of last century, the _raconteur_ occupied the place
in Ireland now taken by the modern novelist, and I believe Hugh Bronte
dropped doctrines into the minds of the young Harshaws which produced
far-reaching results. Such was the fixed conviction of my old teacher,
the Reverend W. McAllister.
It happened that the Martins, another ancient family, lived quite near
to the Harshaws. The land of the two families enclosed Loughorne
round. The Martins were rich and slightly aristocratic, but the two
families were thrown much together, and Samuel Martin, the son of the
one house, married Jane Harshaw, the daughter of the other.
She was a deeply religious and resolute woman, with a stern sense of
duty. One of her nephews tells me she always conducted family worship
after the death of her husband. She died of a fever, caught while
ministering to the dying, in accordance with her high sense of
Christian duty. Her life was given for others, and, at her funeral,
the Reverend S. J. Moore said: "She was a woman who knew her duty and
did it."
Her second son, John Martin, inherited his mother's great mental
capacity and strong sense of duty. At school, in Newry, he met young
John Mitchel, and inspired him with something of his own enthusiasm,
and the two youths came to the conclusion that it was their duty to
put right Ireland's wrongs. John Mitchel was sent to penal servitude
for fifteen or twenty years, and then John Martin stepped into the
place vacated by his friend, and was transported to Van Diemen's Land
for ten years.
The conviction of "honest John Martin" gave a blow to the old system
in Ireland from which it has never recovered. Even his enemies were
shocked at the ferocity of the sentence; but then he had written a
pamphlet under the text: "_Your land, strangers devour it in your
presence, and it is desolate._" (Isaiah, i. 7.) He had proclaimed from
the housetops Hugh Bronte's tenant-right doctrines, of which more
anon. He had attacked the sacred rights of landlordism, and he was
sent to a safe and distant place for quite a different offence, called
treason felony.
John Martin was a man of large property, but he devoted his life and
all his income to what he considered the good of others.
He had taken his B.A. degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied
medicine, and for many years he gave advice and medicine gratuitously
to all who came to him. The poor were passionately attached to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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