The House by the Church-YardLe Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
General
The House by the Church-Yard
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
Country life -- Ireland -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- 18th century -- Fiction
XCIII.--In Which Doctor Toole and Dirty Davy Confer in
the Blue-room. 408
XCIV.--What Doctor Sturk Brought To Mind, and All That
Doctor Toole Heard At Mr. Luke Gamble's. 414
XCV.--In Which Doctor Pell Declines a Fee, and Doctor Sturk
a Prescription. 422
XCVI.--About the Rightful Mrs. Nutter of the Mills, and How
Mr. Mervyn Received The News. 427
XCVII.--In Which Obediah Arrives. 436
XCVIII.--In Which Charles Archer Puts Himself Upon the Country. 441
XCIX.--The Story Ends. 452
[Illustration]
THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCH-YARD.
A PROLOGUE--BEING A DISH OF VILLAGE CHAT.
We are going to talk, if you please, in the ensuing chapters, of what
was going on in Chapelizod about a hundred years ago. A hundred years,
to be sure, is a good while; but though fashions have changed, some old
phrases dropped out, and new ones come in; and snuff and hair-powder,
and sacques and solitaires quite passed away--yet men and women were men
and women all the same--as elderly fellows, like your humble servant,
who have seen and talked with rearward stragglers of that
generation--now all and long marched off--can testify, if they will.
In those days Chapelizod was about the gayest and prettiest of the
outpost villages in which old Dublin took a complacent pride. The
poplars which stood, in military rows, here and there, just showed a
glimpse of formality among the orchards and old timber that lined the
banks of the river and the valley of the Liffey, with a lively sort of
richness. The broad old street looked hospitable and merry, with steep
roofs and many coloured hall-doors. The jolly old inn, just beyond the
turnpike at the sweep of the road, leading over the buttressed bridge by
the mill, was first to welcome the excursionist from Dublin, under the
sign of the Phoenix. There, in the grand wainscoted back-parlour, with
'the great and good King William,' in his robe, garter, periwig, and
sceptre presiding in the panel over the chimneypiece, and confronting
the large projecting window, through which the river, and the daffodils,
and the summer foliage looked so bright and quiet, the Aldermen of
Skinner's Alley--a club of the 'true blue' dye, as old as the Jacobite
wars of the previous century--the corporation of shoemakers, or of
tailors, or the freemasons, or the musical clubs, loved to dine at the
stately hour of five, and deliver their jokes, sentiments, songs, and
wisdom, on a pleasant summer's evening. Alas! the inn is as clean gone
as the guests--a dream of the shadow of smoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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