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A Dog's Religion
Grace After Dinner
His Duel With Captain D'esterre
A Certificate Of Marriage
His Birth
A Mistaken Frenchman
Wisdom
A Courtier's Retort
Arthur O'leary
A Martial Judge
Least Viewed
His Birth
Swift Arbuthnot And Parnell
To Quilca
His Reception At The Rotundo By The Volunteers
Sir R Peel's Opinion Of O'connell
Epistolary Bores
His First Client
Sow-west And The Wigs
Taxing The Air
Swift And Bettesworth
Random Irish Humour
To Quilca
O'leary And John O'keefe
Epistolary Bores
Short Charity Sermon
Gaining Over A Jury
Lots Drawn To Have Him At Dinner
Scene Between Fitzgibbon And Curran In The Irish Parliament
His Duel With St Leger
Election And Railway Dinners
Grace After Dinner
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Meditation Upon A Broomstick
Irish Humour Home
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it
was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain
does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that
withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the
reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the
earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench,
condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined
to make her things clean, and be nasty itself. At length, worn out to
the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of
doors, or condemned to the last use, of kindling a fire. When I beheld
this, I sighed and said within myself, Surely, mortal man is a
broomstick! Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a
thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper
branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has
lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk: he then
flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew upon his head;
but now, should this, our broomstick, pretend to enter the scene,
proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust,
though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to
ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own
excellencies, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree
standing on its head; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature,
his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where
his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his
faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a
remover of grievances, * * sharing deeply all the while in the very same
pollutions he pretends to sweep away: his last days are spent in slavery
to women, and generally the least deserving; till worn to the stumps
like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of
to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.
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Previous: The Upstart
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