Castle Rackrent eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 165 pages of information about Castle Rackrent.

Castle Rackrent eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 165 pages of information about Castle Rackrent.
Irish ground?’ When he told them he had not, ‘Oh, then,’ said one of the Order, ‘you shall soon do so.’  They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a marble slab, and made him stand upon it.] and as soon as the sods came into town, he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after, you know, they could fairly swear they had been upon the ground. [This was actually done at an election in Ireland.] We gained the day by this piece of honesty [See glossary 26].  I thought I should have died in the streets for joy when I seed my poor master chaired, and he bareheaded, and it raining as hard as it could pour; but all the crowds following him up and down, and he bowing and shaking hands with the whole town.

‘Is that Sir Condy Rackrent in the chair?’ says a stranger man in the crowd.

‘The same,’ says I.  ‘Who else should it be?  God bless him!’

‘And I take it, then, you belong to him?’ says he.

‘Not at all,’ says I; ’but I live under him, and have done so these two hundred years and upwards, me and mine.’

‘It’s lucky for you, then,’ rejoins he, ’that he is where he is; for was he anywhere else but in the chair, this minute he’d be in a worse place; for I was sent down on purpose to put him up, [to put him up:  to put him in gaol] and here’s my order for so doing in my pocket.’

It was a writ that villain the wine merchant had marked against my poor master for some hundreds of an old debt, which it was a shame to be talking of at such a time as this.

’Put it in your pocket again, and think no more of it anyways for seven years to come, my honest friend,’ says I; ’he’s a member of Parliament now, praised be God, and such as you can’t touch him:  and if you’ll take a fool’s advice, I’d have you keep out of the way this day, or you’ll run a good chance of getting your deserts amongst my master’s friends, unless you choose to drink his health like everybody else.’

‘I’ve no objection to that in life,’ said he.  So we went into one of the public-houses kept open for my master; and we had a great deal of talk about this thing and that.  ‘And how is it,’ says he, ’your master keeps on so well upon his legs?  I heard say he was off Holantide twelvemonth past.’

‘Never was better or heartier in his life,’ said I.

‘It’s not that I’m after speaking of’ said he; ’but there was a great report of his being ruined.’

‘No matter,’ says I, ’the sheriffs two years running were his particular friends, and the sub-sheriffs were both of them gentlemen, and were properly spoken to; and so the writs lay snug with them, and they, as I understand by my son Jason the custom in them cases is, returned the writs as they came to them to those that sent ’em much good may it do them!—­with a word in Latin, that no such person as Sir Condy Rackrent, Bart., was to be found in those parts.’

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Castle Rackrent from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.