He then prepared to get out of the coach; but whilst the coachman was letting down the step, a gentleman came out of the hosier’s shop to the door, and cried, “Mr. Fulham, I am glad you are come at last. I have been waiting for you this half-hour, and was just going away.” Maurice pulled aside the flap of the hosier’s coat, as he was getting out, that he might peep at the gentleman who spoke; the voice was so like William Deane’s, that he was quite astonished.—”It is — it is William Deane,” cried Maurice, jumping out of the coach and shaking hands with his friend.
William Deane, though now higher in the world than Robinson, was heartily glad to see him again, and to renew their old intimacy. “Mr. Fulham,” said he, turning to the hosier, “excuse me to-day; I’ll come and settle accounts with you to-morrow.”
On their way to Paddington, Maurice related to his friend all that had passed since they parted; how his good luck in the lottery tempted him to try his fortune at the gaming-table; how he was cheated by sharpers, and reduced to the brink of utter ruin; how kind Ellen was towards him in this distress; how he was relieved by Mr. Belton, who was induced to assist him from regard to Ellen and little George; how Mrs. Dolly drank herself into ill health, which would soon have killed her if she had not, in a drunken fit, shortened the business by fracturing her skull; and, lastly, how she left him a lottery ticket, which he had just sold, lest it should be the cause of fresh imprudence. “You see,” added Maurice, “I do not forget all you said to me about lotteries. — Better take good advice late than never. But now, tell me your history.”
“No,” replied William Deane; “that I shall keep till we are all at dinner; Ellen and you, I and my friend George, who, I hope, has not forgotten me.” He was soon convinced that George had not forgotten him, by the joy he showed at seeing him again.
At dinner, William Deane informed them that he was become a rich man, by having made an improvement in the machinery of the cotton-mills, which, after a great deal of perseverance, he had brought to succeed in practice. “When I say that I am a rich man,” continued he, “I mean richer than ever I expected to be. I have a share in the cotton-mill, and am worth about two thousand pounds.”
“Ay,” said Maurice, “you have trusted to your own sense and industry, and not to gaming and lotteries.”
“I am heartily rejoiced you have nothing more to do with them,” said William Deane: “but all this time you forget that I am your debtor. You lent me five guineas at a season when I had nothing. The books I bought with your money helped me to knowledge, without which I should never have got forward. Now I have a scheme for my little friend George, that will, I hope, turn out to your liking. You say he is an intelligent, honest, industrious lad; and that he understands book-keeping, and writes a good hand: I am sure he is much obliged to you for giving him a good education.”
“To his mother, there, he’s obliged for it all,” said Maurice.
“Without it,” continued William Deane, “I might wish him very well; but I could do little or nothing for him. But, as I was going to tell you, that unfortunate man whom you brought to his own door in the hackney-coach to-day, Maurice, is a hosier, who had as good a business as most in the city; but he has ruined himself entirely by gaming. He is considerably in our debt for cotton, and I am to settle accounts with him to-morrow, when he is to give up all his concerns into my hands, in behalf of his brother, who has commissioned me to manage the business, and dissolve the partnership; as he cannot hazard himself, even out of friendship for a brother, with one that has taken to gaming. Now my friend, the elder Fulham, is a steady man, and is in want of a good lad for an apprentice. With your leave, I will speak to him, and get him to take George; and as to the fee, I will take care and settle that for you. I am glad I have found you all out at last. No thanks, pray. Recollect, I am only paying my old debts.”
As William Deane desired to have no thanks, we shall omit the recital of those which he received, both in words and looks. We have only to inform our readers, further, that George was bound apprentice to the hosier; that he behaved as well as might be expected from his excellent education; that Maurice continued, in Mr. Belton’s service, to conduct himself so as to secure the confidence and esteem of his master; and that he grew fonder and fonder of home, and of Ellen, who enjoyed the delightful reflection that she had effected the happiness of her husband and her son.
May equal happiness attend every such good wife and mother! And may every man, who, like Maurice, is tempted to be a gamester, reflect that a good character, and domestic happiness, which cannot be won in any lottery, are worth more than the five thousand, or even the ten thousand pounds prize, let any Mrs. Dolly in Christendom say what she will to the contrary.
Sept. 1799.
ROSANNA.
CHAPTER I.
There are two sorts of content: one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence; the first is a virtue, the second a vice. Examples of both may be found in abundance in Ireland. There you may sometimes see a man in sound health submitting day after day to evils which a few hours’ labour would remedy; and you are provoked to hear him say, “It will do well enough for me. Didn’t it do for my father before me? I can make a shift with things for my time: any how, I’m content.”
This kind of content is indeed the bane of industry. But instances of a different sort may be found, in various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them we may behold men struggling with adversity with all the strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fortitude which must excite at once our pity and admiration.
In a pleasant village in the province of Leinster there lives a family of the name of Gray. Whether or not they are any way related to Old Robin Gray, history does not determine; but it is very possible that they are, because they came, it is said, originally from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however, in the obscurity which involves the early history of the most ancient and illustrious families, we proceed to less disputable and perhaps more useful facts. It is well known, that is, by all his neighbours, that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging prospects: he was the youngest of a large family, and the portion of his father’s property that fell to his share was but just sufficient to maintain his wife and three children. At his father’s death, he had but 100l. in ready money, and he was obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant water; and before the window, of one pane, a dunghill that, reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out the light, and filled the house with the most noisome smell. The ground sloped towards the house door; so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor was so damp and soft, that the print of the nails of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set down his foot. To be sure these nail-marks could scarcely be seen, except just near the door or where the light of the fire immediately shone; because, elsewhere, the smoke was so thick, that the pig might have been within a foot of you without your seeing him. The former inhabitants of this mansion had, it seems, been content without a chimney: and, indeed, almost without a roof; the couples and purlins of the roof having once given way, had never been repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch, so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary.
The prospect without doors was scarcely more encouraging to our hero than the scene within: the farm consisted of about forty acres; and the fences of the grazing-land were so bad, that the neighbours’ cattle took possession of it frequently by day, and always by night. The tillage-ground had been so ill managed by his predecessor, that the land was what is called quite out of heart.
If farmer Gray had also been out of heart, he and his family might at this hour have been beggars. His situation was thought desperate by many of his neighbours; and a few days after his father’s decease, many came to condole with him. Amongst the rest was “easy Simon;” or, as some called him,
“soft Simon,” on account of his unresisting disposition, and contented, or, as we should rather name it, reckless temper. He was a sort of a half or a half quarter gentleman, had a small patrimony of a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, a place in the excise worth fifty more, and a mill, which might have been worth another hundred annually, had it not been suffered to stand still for many a year.
“Wheugh! Wheugh! What a bustle we are in! and what a world of trouble is here!” cried Simon, when he came to Gray’s house, and found him on the ladder taking off the decayed thatch; whilst one of his sons, a lad of about fourteen, was hard at work filling a cart from the dunghill, which blockaded the window. His youngest son, a boy of twelve, with a face and neck red with heat, was making a drain to carry off the water from the green pond; and Rose, the sister, a girl of ten years old, was collecting the ducks, which her mother was going to carry to her landlord’s to sell.
“Wheugh! Wheugh! Wheugh! Why what a world of bustle and trouble is here! Troth, Jemmy Gray, you’re in a bad way, sure enough! Poor cratur! Poor cratur!”
“No man,” replied Gray, “deserves to be called poor, that has his health, and the use of his limbs. Besides,” continued he, “have not I a good wife and good children: and, with those blessings, has not a man sufficient reason to be content?”
“Ay, to be sure: that’s the only way to get through this world,” said Simon; “whatever comes, just to take it easy, and be content. Content and a warm chimney corner is all in all, according to my notion.”
“Yes, Simon,” said Gray, laughing; “but your kind of content would never do for me. Content, that sits down in the chimney corner, and does nothing but smoke his pipe, will soon have the house about his ears; and then what will become of Content?”
“Time enough to think of that when it comes,” said Simon: “fretting never propped a house yet; and if it did, I would rather see it fall than fret.”
“But could not you prop the house,” said Gray, “without fretting?”
“Is it by putting my shoulders to it?” said Simon. “My shoulders have never been used to hard work, and don’t like it any way. As long as I can eat, drink, and sleep, and have a coat to my back, what matter for the rest? Let the world go as it will, I’m content. Shoo! Shoo! The button is off the neck of this great coat of mine, and how will I keep it on? A pin sure will do as well as a button, and better. Mrs. Gray, or Miss Rose, I’ll thank you kindly for a pin.”
He stuck the pin in the place of the button, to fasten the great coat round his throat, and walked off: it pricked his chin about a dozen times before the day was over; but he forgot the next day, and the next, and the next, to have the button sewed on. He was content to make shift, as he called it, with the pin. This is precisely the species of content which leads to beggary.
Not such the temper of our friend Gray. Not an inconvenience that he could remedy, by industry or ingenuity, was he content to endure; but necessary evils he bore with unshaken patience and fortitude. His house was soon new roofed and new thatched; the dunghill was removed, and spread over that part of his land which most wanted manure; the putrescent water of the standing pool was drained off, and fertilized a meadow; and the kitchen was never again overflowed in rainy weather, because the labour of half a day made a narrow trench which carried off the water. The prints of the shoe-nails were no longer visible in the floor; for the two boys trod dry mill seeds into the clay, and beat the floor well, till they rendered it quite hard and even. The rooms also were cleared of smoke, for Gray built a chimney; and the kitchen window, which had formerly been stuffed up, when the wind blew too hard, with an old or new hat, was glazed. There was now light in the house. Light! the great friend of cleanliness and order. The pig could now no longer walk in and out, unseen and unreproved; he ceased to be an inmate of the kitchen.
The kitchen was indeed so altered from what it had been during the reign of the last master, that he did not know it again. It was not in the least like a pig-sty. The walls were whitewashed; and shelves were put up, on which clean wooden and pewter utensils were ranged. There were no heaps of forlorn rubbish in the corners of the room; nor even an old basket, or a blanket, or a cloak, or a great coat thrown down, just for a minute, out of the girl’s way. No: Rose was a girl who always put every thing in its place; and she found it almost as easy to hang a coat, or a cloak, upon a peg, as to throw it down on the floor. She thought it as convenient to put the basket and turf-kish out of her way, when her brothers had brought in the potatoes and fuel, as to let them lie in the middle of the kitchen, to be stumbled over by herself and her mother, or to be gnawed and clawed by a cat and dog. These may seem trifles unworthy the notice of the historian; but trifles such as these contribute much to the comfort of a poor family, and therefore deserve a place in their simple annals.
It was a matter of surprise and censure to some of farmer Gray’s neighbours, that he began by laying out it could not be less than ten pounds (a great sum for him!) on his house and garden at the first setting out; when, to be sure, the land would have paid him better if the money had been laid out there. And why could not he make a shift to live on in the old cabin, for a while, as others had done before his time well enough? A poor man should be contented with a poor house. Where was the use, said they, of laying out the good ready penny in a way that would bring nothing in?
Farmer Gray calculated that he could not have laid out his money to better advantage; for by these ten pounds he had probably saved his wife, his children, and himself, from a putrid fever, or from the rheumatism. The former inhabitants of this house, who had been content to live with the dunghill close to the window, and the green pool overflowing the kitchen, and the sharp wind blowing in through the broken panes, had in the course of a few years lost their health. The father of the family had been crippled by the rheumatism, two children died of the fever, and the mother had such an inflammation in her eyes that she could not see to work, spin, or do anything. Now the whole that was lost by the family sickness, the doctor’s bill, and the burying of the two children, all together, came in three years to nearly three times ten pounds. Therefore Mr. Gray was, if we only consider money, a very prudent man. What could he or any body do without health? Money is not the first thing to be thought of in this world; for there are many things that money cannot buy, and health is one of them. “Health can make money, but money cannot make health,” said our wise farmer. “And then, for the value of a few shillings, say pounds, we have light to see what we are doing, and shelves, and a press to hold our clothes in. Why now, this will be all so much saved to us, by and by; for the clothes will last the longer, and the things about us will not go to wreck; and when I and the boys can come home after our day’s work to a house like this, we may be content.”
Having thus ensured, as far as it was in his power, health, cleanliness, and comfort in his house, our hero and his sons turned their attention to the farm. They set about to repair all the fences; for the boys, though they were young, were able to help their father in the farm: they were willing to work, and happy to work with him. John, the eldest lad, could set potatoes, and Robin was able to hold the plough: so that Gray did not hire any servant-boy to help him; nor did Mrs. Gray hire a maid. “Rose and I,” said she, “can manage very well to look after the two cows, and milk them, and make the butter, and get something too by our spinning. We must do without servants, and may be happy and content to serve ourselves.”
“Times will grow better; that is, we shall make them better every year: we must have the roughest first,” said Gray.
The first year, to be sure, it was rough enough; and, do what they could, they could not do more than make the rent of the farm, which rent amounted to forty pounds. The landlord was a Mr. Hopkins, agent to a gentleman who resided in England. Mr. Hopkins insisted upon having the rent paid up to the day, and so it was. Gray contented himself by thinking that this was perhaps for the best. “When the rent is once paid,” said he, “it cannot be called for
again, and I am in no man’s power; that’s a great comfort. To be sure, if the half year’s rent was left in my hands for a few months, it might have been of service: but it is better not to be under an obligation to such a man as Mr. Hopkins, who would make us pay for it in some shape or other, when we least expected it.”
Mr. Hopkins was what is called in Ireland a middle-man; one that takes land from great proprietors, to set it again at an advanced, and often an exorbitant, price, to the poor. Gray had his land at a fair rent, because it was not from Mr. Hopkins his father had taken the lease, but from the gentleman to whom this man was agent. Mr. Hopkins designed to buy the land which Gray farmed, and he therefore wished to make it appear as unprofitable as possible to his landlord, who, living in England, knew but little of his own estate. “If these Grays don’t pay the rent,” said he to his driver, “pound their cattle, and sell at the end of eight days. If they break and run away, I shall have the land clear, and may make a compliment of it to tenants and friends of my own, after it comes into my hands.” He was rather disappointed, when the rent was paid to the day. “But,” said he, “it won’t be so next year; the man is laying out his money on the ground, on draining and fencing, and that won’t pay suddenly. We’ll leave the rent in his hands for a year or so, and bring down an ejectment upon him, if he once gets into our power, as he surely will. Then, all that he has done to the house will be so much in my way. What a fool he was to lay out his money so!”
It happened, however, that the money which Gray had laid out in making his house comfortable and neat was of the greatest advantage to him, and at a time and in a way which he least expected. His cottage was within sight of the high road, that led to a town from which it was about a mile distant. A regiment of English arrived, to be quartered in the town; and the wives of some of the soldiers came a few hours after their husbands. One of these women, a sergeant’s wife, was taken suddenly in labour, before they reached the town; and the soldier who conducted the baggage-cart in which she was, drew up to the first amongst a row of miserable cabins that were by the road-side, to ask the people if they would give her lodging: but the sick woman was shocked at the sight of the smoke and dirt of this cabin, and begged to be carried on to the neat whitewashed cottage that she saw at a little distance. This was Gray’s house.
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