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Who would have dared to say that amid this rough, uncouth people, such loveliness could take root and nourish? And yet it is that loveliness which has permeated and regenerated the miners themselves. But for her these nights would be spent in drinking, roistering, fighting and carousing. It is her blessed influence, which unconsciously to herself has purified the springs of life.
Among the gentry there was one great roistering blade, a fighting bully, Jacek Soplica, who was called in jest the Wojewoda; in truth he was of great influence in the wojewodeship, for he had absolute authority over the whole family of the Soplicas and controlled their three hundred votes according to his will, although he himself possessed nothing except a little plot of ground, a sabre, and great mustaches that stretched from ear to ear.
And this attitude to life was written all over their personalities; they seemed to Thyrsis a coarse and roistering crew, and he shrunk from them in repugnance. He went his own impetuous way. He stayed at the university until he had taught himself French and Italian, as well as German, and had read all the best literature in those languages.
There were the grenadiers of Oudinot, who carried the Russian centre; eleven wagons were filled with their wounded. Here come the voltigeurs of Bernadotte's brigade; see how the fellows preserve their ancient repute, cheering and laughing, ever the same, whether roistering at midnight in the Faubourg St. Antoine or rushing madly upon the ranks of the enemy!
Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out further; but for the present I must not so now, to try back: I will suppose my absentee friend to have passed his “day in town,” amazed and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago, and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will introduce him to an evening party a society where the élite of Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago: some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in the “Shades,” is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately assuming the “Epic or the Lake” school of physic. All this may amuse, but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a danseuse in a ballet this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat of Irish temperament; “the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;” and a new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful; which, in the days of his “libertine youth,” he only heard at riotous carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with words ay, there’s the rub which, in his maturer years, he blushes to have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and animated gesture, without remembering that she knows nothing of the associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her vis-
But, mind you, I could do them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.
Among these the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roistering blade of the name of Abraham or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance.
They passed with little tramp and a good deal of shuffle, shabby, wretched, silent. I did not hear a laugh or an oath; I did not see a violent gesture, and hardly a smile, that day. The roistering, roaring, terrible 'Reds, as I saw them, were weary, dull men, doing ill-directed work with plodding indifference.
These were the patrons of the log tavern which stood near by with the blackened stumps around it, where there was much card-playing and roistering, ay, and even duelling, of nights. "Thar's Mac," cried a backwoodsman who was sitting on the court-house steps as we rode up. "Howdy, Mac; be they tryin' to git your land, too?" "Howdy, Mac," said a dozen more, paying a tribute to Tom's popularity.
"Oh, that's so! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda of the Staked Plains? Mrs. Cupp said she was due tonight," cried Laura. "For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Bess, "who is that?" "A sawney!" cried one of the other girls. "They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the very farthest West there is," Laura said gravely. "Of course she will ride in on a mustang, or something like that."
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