" And
he actually put the whisky-bottle by into the cupboard.
The old man and his son went home next day, promising me, if I would but
come to see them, "twa hundert acres o' the best partridge-shooting, and
wild dooks as plenty as sparrows; and to live in clover till I bust, if I
liked." And so, as Bunyan has it, they went on their way, and I saw them no
more.
CHAPTER XXII.
AN EMERSONIAN SERMON.
Certainly, if John Crossthwaite held the victim-of-circumstance doctrine
in theory, he did not allow Mike Kelly to plead it in practice, as
an extenuation of his misdeeds. Very different from his Owenite
"it's-nobody's-fault" harangues in the debating society, or his admiration
for the teacher of whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly, was his
lecture that evening to the poor Irishmen on "It's all your own fault."
Unhappy Kelly! he sat there like a beaten cur, looking first at one
of us, and then at the other, for mercy, and finding none. As soon
as Crossthwaite's tongue was tired, Mackaye's began, on the sins of
drunkenness, hastiness, improvidence, over-trustfulness, &c.
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