Ireland -- Fiction; Land League (Ireland) -- Fiction; Land tenure -- Fiction; Political fiction
"Yes, I shall. It isn't so very easy for a man not to make a goose of
himself in that place. You've got to sit by and do nothing for a year
or two. It is very difficult. A man cannot afford to waste his time
in that manner. There is all Ireland to be regenerated, and I have to
learn the exact words which the prudery of the House of Commons will
admit. Of course I have made a goose of myself; but the question is
whether I did not make a knave of myself in apologising for language
which was undoubtedly true. Only think that a man so brutal, so
entirely without feelings, without generosity, without any touch
of sentiment, should be empowered by the Queen of England to lock
up, not only every Irishman, but every American also, and to keep
them there just as long as he pleases! And he revels in it. I do
believe that he never eats a good breakfast unless half-a-dozen new
'suspects' are reported by the early police in the morning; and I
am not to call such a man a 'disreputable jailer.' I may call him a
'distasteful warder.' It's a disgrace to a man to sit in such a House
and in such company. Of course I was a goose, but I was only a goose
according to the practices of that special duck-pond." Mr. O'Mahony,
as he said this, walked about angrily, with his hands in his
breeches' pockets, and told himself that no honest man could draw the
breath of life comfortably except in New York.
"I don't know much about it, father," said Rachel, "but I think you'd
better cut and run. Your twenty men will never do any good here.
Everybody hates them who has got any money, and their only friends
are just men as Mr. Pat Carroll, of Ballintubber."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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