CHAPTER VI. THE MEMBER FOR INCHABOGUE Mr. O'Shea lay in his bed at the Bagni di Lucca. It was late in the afternoon, and he had not yet risen, being one of those who deem, to travesty the poet,-- That the best of all ways To shorten our days Is to add a few hours to the night, my dear. In other words, he was ineffably bored and wearied, sick of the place, the people, and himself, and only wearing over the time as one might do the stated term of an imprisonment His agent--Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Mr. Miles Mahony, who was agent for all the Irish gentlemen of Mr. O'Shea's politics, and who has either estates very much encumbered, or no estates at all--had written him that letter, which might be stereotyped in every agent's office, and sent off indiscriminately by post, at due intervals, to any of the clients, for there was the same bead-roll of mishaps and calamities Ireland has been suffering under for centuries. Take any traveller or guide-book experience of the land, and it is a record of rain that never ceased. The Deluge was a passing April shower compared to the national climate. Ask any proprietor, however, more especially if a farmer, and he would tell you, “We're ruined, entirely ruined, with the drought,”--perhaps he 'd have called it “druth.” “If the rain doesn't fall before twenty-four hours, there will be no potatoes, no grass, no straw, the wheat won't fill, the cattle will be destroyed,” and so on; just as if the whole population was not soaked through like a wet sponge, and the earth a sludge of mud and swamp, to which Holland seems a sand-bank in comparison! Then came the runaway tenants, only varied by those who couldn't be induced to “run” on any terms. There was the usual “agrarian outrage,” with the increased police force quartered on the barony in consequence, and perhaps a threat of a special commission, with more expense besides. There was the extract of the judge's charge, saying that he never remembered so “heavy a calendar,” the whole winding up with an urgent appeal to send over ten or twenty pounds to repair the chapel or the priest's house, or contribute to some local object, “at your indifference to which there is very great discontent at this moment.” A pleasant postcript also mentioned that a dissolution of Parliament was daily expected, and that it would be well you 'd “come home and look after the borough, where the Tories were working night and day to increase their influence.” “Bad luck to them for Tories!” muttered he, as he threw the crumpled document from him. “I 'd have been well off to-day if it was n't for them. There's no telling the money the contested elections cost me, while, to make out that I was a patriot, I could n't take a place, but had to go on voting and voting out of the purity of my motives. It was an evil hour when I took to politics at all. Joe! Joe!” cried he, aloud, following up the appeal with a shrill whistle.