For Fortune and Glory | Page 3

Surrey and Essex being so.
They were all Englishmen he had always thought. His bewilderment
was by no means diminished when, after this speech, and without again
putting the stem of his narghile near his mouth, his uncle raised his
head and poured out a volume of smoke, which it would have taken the
united efforts of a couple of Germans about five minutes to produce.
He was quite veiled by the cloud, through which the gleam of his eyes
seemed to Harry to have an almost supernatural effect.
"You are nearly seventeen years of age, and will soon be leaving
school," he resumed. "What are they going to do with you then?"
"I have not quite made up my mind what profession I should like," said
Harry, somewhat hesitatingly. "I am fond of drawing, and like being

out of doors, and so I have thought at times of getting articled to a civil
engineer."
"Ay, ay; to aid the march of civilisation, as the cant phrase goes; to
bring nations closer together, that they may cut one another's throats
when they meet. To make machines do the work by which men earn
their living, and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or,
perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into
obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his
birthright without knowing what he is doing. Or a doctor, fighting
madly against the decree of the Omnipotent, daring to try to stem the
flowing tide of death. If your eyes were but opened, how gladly would
you cast off the trammels of an effete society, and follow me to a land
where a man can breathe freely. I will give you a horse fleet as the
wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!"
"I have thought I should like the army, too, sir," said bewildered Harry,
trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse as
something tangible.
"The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine--the slave of
slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste your
blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of its
inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed for
nothing; not even plunder."
He drew several long inhalations, repeating the conjuring trick of
swallowing the smoke and emitting it several seconds afterwards, for
quite ten minutes before he spoke again.
"But the ties of home and kindred are strong," he continued in a calmer
tone. "Your mother, your sister, will draw you back from the nobler lot.
I know what the love of family is; I, who have returned to this seething
cauldron of misery, vice, disease, and degradation which fools call
civilisation, and take a pride in, in order to see my sister once more.
Partly for that at least. And you are her son, and you have the stamp of
the Burke upon your face. Hark you, boy! In the time of Cromwell, not
two hundred and fifty years ago, your direct ancestor was a powerful

Irish chief, with large domains and many brave men to follow him to
battle. When the English came with the cold-blooded, preconceived
scheme of pacifying Ireland once and for all by the wholesale massacre
of the inhabitants, our grandsire was overpowered by numbers,
betrayed, surprised, and driven to his last refuge, a castle but little
capable of defence. He was surrounded; his wife and children were
with him, all young, one an infant at the breast; and there were other
women, helpless and homeless, who had sought shelter within the walls.
Therefore, resistance being quite hopeless, our chief offered to
surrender. But the English leader replied, `Give no quarter; they are
wild beasts, not men. Burn up the wasps' nest, maggots and all!' They
did it; faggots were piled round the building and set on fire, and those
who attempted to escape were received on the English spears and
tossed back into the flames. The eldest son was away with a
detachment at the time, and so escaped the fate which would otherwise
have annihilated our race. But his estates were stolen from him and
conferred on the murderers, whose descendants hold them to the
present day. Have the Burkes best reason to love the English or to hate
them?"
Harry Forsyth was a practical youth, who took things as he found them,
and he could not even understand how anybody's feelings, much less
their actions, should be affected by anything which happened in the
days of Oliver Cromwell. He might just as well refuse a penny to an
Italian organ-grinder, because Julius Caesar ill-treated the ancient
Britons.