CHAPTER XII.

DUBLIN—­TOM O’FLAHERTY—­A REMINISCENCE OF THE PENINSULA.

Dear, dirty Dublin—­“Io te salute”—­how many excellent things might be said of thee, if, unfortunately, it did not happen that the theme is an old one, and has been much better sung than it can ever now be said.  With thus much of apology for no more lengthened panegyric, let me beg of my reader, if he be conversant with that most moving melody—­the Groves of Blarney—­to hum the following lines, which I heard shortly after my landing, and which well express my own feelings for the “loved spot.”

               Oh!  Dublin, sure, there is no doubtin’,
                Beats every city upon the say. 
               ’Tis there you’ll see O’Connell spouting,
                And Lady Morgan making “tay.” 
               For ’tis the capital of the greatest nation
                With finest peasantry on a fruitful sod,
               Fighting like devils for conciliation,
                And hating each other for the love of God.

Once more, then, I found myself in the “most car-drivingest city,” en route to join on the expiration of my leave.  Since my departure, my regiment had been ordered to Kilkenny, that sweet city, so famed in song for its “fire without smoke;” but which, were its character in any way to be derived from its past or present representative, might certainly, with more propriety, reverse the epithet, and read “smoke without fire.”  My last communication from head-quarters was full of nothing but gay doings —­balls, dinners, dejeunes, and more than all, private theatricals, seemed to occupy the entire attention of every man of the gallant __th.  I was earnestly entreated to come, without waiting for the end of my leave—­that several of my old “parts were kept open for me;” and that, in fact, the “boys of Kilkenny” were on tip-toe in expectation of my arrival, as though his Majesty’s mail were to convey a Kean or a Kemble.  I shuddered a little as I read this, and recollected “my last appearance on any stage,” little anticipating, at the moment, that my next was to be nearly as productive of the ludicrous, as time and my confessions will show.  One circumstance, however, gave me considerable pleasure.  It was this:—­I took it for granted that, in the varied and agreeable occupations which so pleasurable a career opened, my adventures in love would escape notice, and that I should avoid the merciless raillery my two failures, in six months, might reasonably be supposed to call forth.  I therefore wrote a hurried note to Curzon, setting forth the great interest all their proceedings had for me, and assuring him that my stay in town should be as short as possible, for that I longed once more to “strut the monarch of the boards,” and concluded with a sly paragraph, artfully intended to act as a “paratonnere” to the gibes and jests which I dreaded, by endeavouring to make light of my matrimonial speculations.  The postscript ran somewhat thus—­“Glorious fun have I had since we met; but were it not that my good angel stood by me, I should write these hurried lines with a wife at my elbow; but luck, that never yet deserted, is still faithful to your old friend, H. Lorrequer.”