Old Jack

Old Jack, by W.H.G. Kingston

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Title: Old Jack
Author: W.H.G. Kingston
Release Date: October 17, 2007 [EBook #23049]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Old Jack, by W.H.G. Kingston.
CHAPTER ONE.
DONNYBROOK FAIR.
Jack began his story thus:

Of course you've heard of Donnybrook Fair, close to the city of Dublin.
What a strange scene it was, to be sure, of uproar and wild confusion--
of quarrelling and fighting from beginning to end--of broken heads, of
black eyes, and bruised shins--of shouting, of shrieking and swearing--
of blasphemy and drunkenness in all its forms of brutality. Ay, and as
I've heard say, of many a deed of darkness, not omitting murder, and
other crimes not less foul and hateful to Him who made this beautiful
world, and gave to man a religion of love and purity. There the
rollicking, roaring, bullying, fighting, harum-scarum Irishman of olden
days had full swing for all the propensities and vile passions which
have ruined him at home, and gained him a name and a fame not to be
envied throughout the world. Often have I wondered whether, had a
North American Indian, or a South-Sea Islander, visited the place, he
could have been persuaded that he had come to a land of Christian men.
Certainly an angel from heaven would have looked upon the
assemblage as a multitude of Satan's imps let loose upon the world.
They tell me that the fair and its bedevilments have pretty well been
knocked on the head. I am glad of it, though I have never again been to
the spot from the day of which I am about to speak.
I remember very little of my childish life. Indeed, my memory is nearly
a blank up to the time to which I allude. That time was one of the first
days of that same Donnybrook Fair; but I remember that and good
reason I have so to do. I was, however, but a small chap then, young in
years, and little as to size.
My father's name was Amos Williams. He came from England and
settled in Dublin, where he married my mother, who was an
Irishwoman. Her name I never heard. If she had relations, they did not,
at all events, own her. I suspect, from some remarks she once let drop
which I did not then understand, that they had discarded her because
she had become a Protestant when she married my father. She was
gentle and pious, and did her utmost, during the short time she
remained on earth, to teach me the truths of that glorious gospel to
which, in many a trial, she held fast, as a ship to the sheet-anchor with a
gale blowing on a lee-shore. She died young, carried off by a malignant
fever. Her last prayers were for my welfare here and hereafter. Had I

always remembered her precepts I should, I believe, have been in a
very different position to what I now am in my old age. My poor father
took her death very much to heart. For days after her funeral he sat on
his chair in our little cottage with his hands before him, scarcely lifting
up his head from his breast, forgetting entirely that he ought to go out
and seek for work, as without it he had no means of finding food for
himself and me. I should have starved had not a kind woman, a
neighbour, brought me in some potatoes and buttermilk. Little enough I
suspect she had to spare after feeding her own children.
At length my father roused himself to action. Early one morning,
seizing his hat and bidding me stay quiet till his return, he rushed out of
the house. He was a stonemason. He got work, I believe, but the
tempter came in his way. A fellow-workman induced him to enter a
whisky shop. Spirits had, in his early days, been his bane. My mother's
influence had kept him sober. He now tried to forget his sorrow in
liquor. "Surely I have a right to cure my grief as best I can," said he.
Unhappily he did not wait for a reply from conscience. Little food
could he buy from the remnant of his day's wages. Thus he went on
from day to day, working hard when sober, drinking while he had
money to