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The Journey
61

“I needn’t tell you more, Charley; but in ten minutes after, feigning some excuse to leave the room, the terrified cockney took fight, and offering twenty guineas for a horse to convey him to Athlone, he left Galway, fully convinced ‘that they don’t yet know us on the other side of the channel.’”


Chapter XIII

The Journey


The election concluded—the turmoil and excitement of the contest over—all was fast resuming its accustomed routine around us, when one morning my uncle informed me that I was at length to leave my native county, and enter upon the great world, as a student of Trinity College, Dublin. Although long since in expectation of this eventful change, it was with no slight feeling of emotion I contemplated the step, which, removing me at once from all my early friends and associations, was to surround me with new companions and new influences, and place before me very different objects of ambition from those I had hitherto been regarding.

My destiny had been long ago decided; the army had had its share of the family, who brought little more back with them from the wars, than a short allowance of members and shattered constitutions; the navy had proved, on more than one occasion, that-the fate of the O’Malleys did not incline to hanging; so that, in Irish estimation, but one alternative remained, and that was the bar. Besides, as my uncle remarked with great truth and foresight, “Charley will he tolerably independent of the public, at all events; for, even if they never send him a brief; there’s law enough in the family to last his time”—a rather novel reason, by-the-bye, for making a man a lawyer, and which induced Sir Harry, with his usual clearness, to observe to me—

“Upon my conscience, boy, you are in luck; if there had been a Bible in the house, I firmly believe he’d have made you a parson.”

Considine alone, of all my uncle’s advisers, did not concur in this determination respecting me. He set forth, with an eloquence that certainly converted me,that my head was better calculated for bearing hard knocks than unravelling knotty points; that a shake would become it infinitely better than a wig; and declared roundly, that a boy who began so well, and had such very pretty notions about shooting, was positively thrown away in the Four Courts. My uncle, however, was firm, and, as old Sir Harry supported him, the day was decided against us, Considine murmuring, as he left the room, something that did not seem quite a brilliant anticipation of the success awaiting me in my legal career. As for myself, though only a silent spectator of the debate, all my wishes were with the Count. From my earliest boyhood a military life had been my strongest desire; the roll of the drum, and the shrill fife that played through the little village, with its ragged troop of recruits following, had charms for me I cannot describe; and, had a choice been allowed me, I would infinitely rather have been a sergeant in the dragoons, than one of his Majesty’s learned