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faces of his family. The excited imagination of other adventurers, as innocent of experience as himself, had inflamed his dormant fancy for once in his life, and he assured his own ready credulity, and the skepticism of his reluctant helpmate, that money was vastly plenty in America; that, according to the accounts of those who had heard from there, it all but grew on the bushes, and could be had for the picking up; that work was abundant at all times and seasons, and some said it had been known to do itself!

"And is it mad ye are, Thaddy M'Calloran ?" said the tearful and heart-sick Bridget, when her husband proudly informed her that the passage was really engaged for the whole family in the steerage of the packet-ship Cytherea, and that within a given time all must be ready to go on board. "Is it mad ye are, to dhrag us all away from home, and grave to death the heart of the ould mither that bare ye, to say nothing of your own wife and little ones? Sure you ought to have more heart for them that wants to lay their ould bones in this blissed soil, if ye care naught for your own flesh and blood!" taunted Biddy, while tears poured over her cheeks.

But Biddy found that, for this time, expostulation and tears were alike unavailing. Thaddy was bent on going to "Ameriky" to try his fortunes there, and to see if his fine family of boys might not turn out presidents yet, and Kathleen, the only daughter of all the seven, might not, in blooming maidenhood, take the eye of some distinguished merchant, and become perhaps richer and finer than any of her ancestors had been. No motives and no discouragements moved him; America was the goal, and nothing but America would satisfy him.

The cottage was deserted; the movables, including the grandparents and the seven. children, were deposited on board the Cytherea; and she drew up her anchor, unfurled her white wings, and put out to sea, while a chorus of groans and sobbings burst from the mothers and daughters in the steerage, which wailed above the jarring, and oaths,

and tumults on deck, like the funeral-song of hope and all that promised happiness.

The voyage was finally accomplished, but not till sorrowful experiences indeed had been penned in the M'Calloran history. Winds were boisterous and contrary, and drove the good ship far from her course. This was, however, only the beginning of sorrows. A mortal sickness broke out in the swarming steerage, caused by the fetid and pestilent atmosphere, and the fraternization of filth of every variety and description of loathsomeness. It prostrated every child of the M'Calloran family, and three rosy-cheeked boys, after a few days of acute and mortal suffering, closed their young eyes, and the sad parents saw their dear and cherished little bodies sink, to rise no more, down, down, into the cold and fathomless ocean depths. Oh, what pangs and agonizing regrets wrung the maternal heart of poor Biddy, as she hushed their dying wail in her arms, and pressed her parched and feverish lips to the pestilence-infected cheeks of her expiring children! Thaddeus was stupefied by the stroke, and by the remorseful self-reproaches which distracted his weak brain, and made him weep and sigh most piteously; and while Biddy, with the dauntless and untiring energy of a true mother, tenderly and softly soothed the deathagonies of her children in their convulsive conflict with the King of terrors, her husband could only stand by her side, and groan, and wish himself back again in what now seemed to his repentance indeed a Paradise, the turf-walled cottage home in “blessed Ireland!"

When the third child had been sent to his long slumber in an ocean grave, the most imminent danger seemed to hang over the eldest boy, an open-browed, dark-haired child, the pride and favorite of his mother. Poor Biddy felt that her cup of bitterness would be drained to the dregs if this firstborn son, her best beloved, should be removed from her sight; and it seemed that the desperation of maternal love would chain him to life. The gracious heart of the Father who watches the fall of the sparrow,

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and listens to the moan of the young raven, and whose ears are ever open to our cry, read the sincere purpose of her soul, and the boy was given from the very grasp of death back into the bosom of his mother.

At last, with languid steps, and aching hearts, and withered hopes, the emigrants trod upon a stranger shore. Their provisions were all exhausted, their money was nearly all spent. The grandparents seemed to look longingly at the "Potter's Field," as having left behind them every thing that made life dear or valuable. The surviving children were meagre, and pale, and feeble; the hearts of the parents were full to the very brim of hopelessness and sorrow. But something must be done; a shelter of some kind, if it were only a shed, must be provided; food and employment must be obtained; for Biddy M'Calloran was resolved her remaining little ones should not starve.

find none for himself; she could take washing and ironing for the gentle folks; she could find "turns," and "jobs," and "chores" for Johnny and Kathleen. A very thrifty and notable dame was Bridget M'Calloran, by and by, when the keen edge of her sorrow and disappointment had been kindly time-blunted; and though her brow more frequently than of yore contracted frowningly, and her voice was sometimes elevated to a higher key than would be admissible in drawing-rooms, she managed to keep her house-if the plan of their abode might be dignified with the name-her husband, and her children, "in very nate and tidy thrim." They were abundantly patched, to be sure, with all sorts of colors, but never ragged or filthy; and if Bridget scolded, and fretted, and "twitted" unwisely, she was, nevertheless, an excellent wife, a faithful mother, and a model in many things to her proverbially negligent countrywomen.

CHAPTER II.

"COME now, Biddy darlint," said Thaddy one evening when he came in from loitering in the streets, for he had found no work that day, though his wife had had no lack of washing and ironing-enough to make her feel worn and weary; for it was a sultry and suffocat

A single room in a crazy old building in New York was procured, and they crowded into a hive already swarming with their disappointed and discontented countrymen. In the lapse of a few weeks, the M'Calloran family was diminished by the decease of the grandparents, and near them, like a fresh bud laid to wither beside a hoar and mossgrown trunk, they buried still another boy. This latter loss, however, was soon made up to them in the advent of a fat and chubbying evening in midsummer, and, besides, the child, whose enjoyment, when out of the mother's arms, seemed perfect while engaged in examining his own wonderful little hands, so round, and soft, and plump, and dimpled.

children had been unusually mischievous and troublesome, and Biddy's patience had ebbed down almost to the low-water mark. She was not, indeed, so even-tempered and gentle as she used to be in the deserted home in the "ould counthry," and when Thaddy came in this evening, he found things in a good deal of confusion. Mrs. M'Calloran was scolding boisterously; Kathleen was pouting, and snivelling, and cover

With the birth of this boy, things seemed to take a more prosperous turn. Thaddeus, to be sure, had left all of the mushroom energy that had so suddenly sprung up before his emigration entirely behind; but he was still a very kind and docile husband,ing her summarily boxed ears with her and a very fond and devoted father. Biddy resolved herself into a "committee of ways and means," and her invention, like the in⚫vention of women in general, steadily kept pace with every novel emergency. She could find work for Thaddy when he could

hands; little Mike, with tearful eyes and an angry countenance, was rubbing off the smart which had not ceased to burn and tingle ever since a measure of salutary discipline had been administered by the strong, horny hands of his mother, in return for

his snatching the candlestick from the baby; the baby was kicking and screaming out his resentment, although the snatched candlestick had been restored; John had sought quiet in a corner, and with an earnest and thoughtful face, he was looking delightedly at an old torn picture-book, which he had the good fortune to pick up in the street.

"Come, Biddy, darlint," soothed Thaddy, "whether hadn't ye betther give over your scoulding the childhers a bit, and be aisy for a leetle! no good will happen for scoulding 80 much."

"An I reckon ye would be afther having as much scoulding yerself, Thaddy," retorted the irritated Mrs. M'Calloran, "was ye tied up to the childhers from mornin' to night, as their mither is, with all their mouths to fill besides! Why don't ye conthrive somethin' to plase 'em and keep 'em quiet, whin niver a bit of nothin' else have ye to do?"

"That's what I will, sure," returned Thaddy, sitting down on a chair, and summoning the children smilingly about him. "Come, Kathleen, and my little Mike, we'll have some sport that will dry up your tears and make ye look smilin' and happy again."

The children were in a moment by his side, and he began the performance of some simple games and pranks, which very soon made Kathleen forget her red and stinging ears, and Mike the maltreatment he had suffered, in the childish heartiness of their merriment. The cloud passed away from Biddy's face, by and by, and she took up the baby in her arms, and sat down beside her husband, that baby too might join in the frolic and forget the grievances he had endured in the temporary loss of his most untoward plaything. But Johnny was too deeply absorbed in his old tattered, worn-out picture-book, to be attracted even by the gleeful shouts that rung out from the circle so happily clustered together; at last, however, when he had looked it through and through, with ever-increasing admiration, he laid it aside, and with his bright face sparkling with pleasure, he drew into the group.

"I wish you could make pictures, father," at length he said.

"I can, sure, my son," replied Thaddy, "an' it's pictures that ye're afther wanting; any thing to plase ye, darlint.”

The children all fixed their wondering eyes upon him, as he took the candle from the table and placed it with the air of a magician in Kathleen's hands, that shadows might be cast more favorably on the opposite wall. They watched in amazement the mysterious interlocking and hooking together of his fingers.

"Now look on the wall yonder," he said, "and let's see which of ye all will tell me first what kind of crather ye see there."

The children opened their eyes very wide and round, to take in the form and dimensions of the wonderful beast that was to be somehow inexplicably connected with the strange linking of their father's fingers. Ah! there it comes! A head, and eyes, and ears, and legs, just like some animal. But what is it?

"Oh, there's a rabbit on the wall !" shouted Johnny, clapping his hands. “How could ye make him, father?"

"A rabbit on the wall!" repeated Kathleen and Mike; and then they all united in a chorus of glad laughter, in which the baby sympathetically joined, screaming and crowing with a hearty enthusiasm that won a loving smile to the face of his mother, and warned her to fold her arms more securely about him, to save him from the danger of a sudden bound into the air, in the very excess of his simple enjoyment.

"What makes it, father? What?" earnestly inquired Johnny, as the rabbit still lay in bold relief on the wall.

"Nothing, sure, only the candle asthraming through the fingers," replied his father. "Ye can do it yourself, boy: hook your fingers together, so, and hold 'em up 'twixt the light and the wall, and ye'll have a baste of yer own."

Johnny's education in casting shadows was more delightful to him than any lessons he had ever learned. All the remainder o

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the evening, till long after the eyes of the other children were fast locked in slumber, the fascinated boy amused himself by removing the light from place to place, to throw the shadow of every thing in the room on the walls. He was astonished and puzzled with the different dimensions and shapes of the shadows, according to their different distances and positions, in relation to his little flickering luminary. Breathlessly inquisitive, Johnny sought of the ignorance of his parents the elucidation of the mystery; his mind had been suddenly quickened into vigorous action, and he was not enlightened with his father's explanation, drawn, to be sure, from the best stores of his philosophy, "that it was always so, and that there was niver a bit of rason for it, only it did so." The awakened intellect of the boy panted to know the laws and the principles which governed those changes; he wondered if any body could render a more satisfactory explanation than his father had done; he wondered if there were any books in the world that told about shadows, and if there were, how ardently he longed to be a scholar, that he might lay up in his own heart such treasures of knowledge.

It was not until after repeated admonitions from his mother that Johnny M'Calloran could be persuaded to bed; and then the inner chambers of his fancy were all hung about with shapes, and pictures, and faces, and varying shadows, which changed and flitted marvellously. There was a glow of light and beauty within, of which he had sometimes seen ill-defined and misunderstood glimpses before, when objects of beauty or sublimity had met his vision; but now the inner imagery seemed substantial, and he feared to open his eyes upon the darkness of his garret, lest the blessed sights should vanish irrecoverably away.

His dreams were but a continuation of his waking fancies; he saw over again, with renewed wonder, the rabbit on the wall, and, under his enchanted gaze, it seemed to unfold into a living, breathing, moving thing. Was it not the inexplicable, but spontaneous

outbursting of an impulse, which, though vastly remote in its relationship, might yet claim kindred with the impulse which brought Pygmalion to the feet of his peerless Galatea, with a prayer that a form so divinely beautiful as the marble he had chiselled, might no longer be passionless and dead, but waken into the perfection of an actual existence?

From this hour, this battle-hour of his genius, as it were, the soul of the Irish boy seemed to rise above his condition, and to tabernacle within itself. The simple and puerile enjoyments of the childish mind lost all charm for him; he forgot the "chores" his mother required him to do at home; he forgot the task his teachers required him to learn at school; and yet somehow he became, in a little while, both intelligent and ambitious beyond the measure of his years. He mastered the spellingbook with incredible facility, and then he trod disdainfully the simple and rudimental pathway which children are required to tread. His mind thirsted and clamored for the inbreaking of a stronger and clearer light; but his parents were very poor and ignorant, and in the lowest social position; yes, and his teachers were poor and ignorant too, and he was left to pine under an inward famine, because nobody understood or could compound the nutriment which would have given him vigor. There were "immortal longings" in him-longings, whose unfolding and maturing his poverty and low station seemed likely effectually to smother; but in the depths of his soul a heaven-lit flame struggled to burn-a flame which must be self-consuming, or burst its way out into an element from which it could derive support and strength, and the quickening of a new inspiration.

John was very happy when he came in undisputed possession of a slate and pencil, all his own. Long before had he perfected himself in "charcoal sketches," with the wall, the hearth, the pavement, for a canvas. Now he would sit, hour after hour, throwing upon his slate singularly natu

ral and graceful outlines of almost every thing within the range of his vision. The faces of his parents, brothers, and sisters, in their many varying expressions; the cat, the table, the tea-kettle, the chairs, fancy scenes, both serious and comic; groupings, rude and undirected by scientific principles, to be sure, but strangely perfect and original. The unequivocal exponents of a latent genius they were, and they seemed to rub off from the point of his pencil, and to take form and comeliness at his will.

His parents called him a "strange and techy child;" and his mother, fondly as she doated on him, began to chide him as an idle and useless boy, good for very little or nothing, when the family were for ever in such need. His father, who was himself a worshipper of ease and idleness, had, nevertheless, a strong anxiety that John should be useful. They, naturally enough, lost all forbearance for John's idle propensities, as they imagined them, and hired him out, at a good chance, to clean gutters and watch swine; low and loathsome drudgery, from which the high soul of the boy recoiled and revolted; and by and by, after storms of hard words between father and son, and an unmerciful whipping for his obstinacy and rebellion, John's share of the potatoes was left to increase the rations of the other hungry mouths; John's straw pallet in the garret, the dearest place in the house to him, for it had been turned into an incipient studio, was untenanted; and he had disappeared, nobody knew whither.

At first they passionately cursed their ungrateful child for his desertion, just as his labor began to be productive, and the possession of him a benefit; and then came a not unnatural transition of feeling, and they grieved over his absence and unknown fate, more bitterly than they would have grieved to lay him peacefully at rest in the burial-place.

CHAPTER III.

THE years which followed-years in which no tidings came of the runaway son-were

years of wretchedness indeed to the M'Calloran family. Thaddeus became confirmed in his habits of indolence; he contracted, moreover, vicious and ruinous appetites; wasted Biddy's laboriously gained pittances at the tippling house; swaggered, and swore, and rioted in the streets; raved, quarrelled, or slept, at home; a miserable, loathsome, bloated victim of intemperance. With such a fire kindled at the root of domestic happiness, no wonder Biddy grew negligent and irritable and violent under the abuse she endured, and the sufferings and burdens she was forced to bear. Biddy M'Calloran was born with a gentle heart; drunkenness was a vice she abhorred, and could by no means pardon, especially when it took the bread from the mouths of her children, and turned her home, low and poor as it was at best, into a haunt for a foul imbruted creature, who was her torment rather than her helpmate. She hated every thing in life, except the swarm of meagre, squalid, tattered children, that kept continually increasing around her: a scarcity of every thing else, there were children enough; and she prayed passionately to the saints that she might die, only that her eyes longed for one more sight of her 'swate and darling Johnny, an' he were yet above ground."

Darkness had thus settled heavily about the household of the emigrant; when one morning, in the midst of a noisy altercation between Thaddeus and Biddy for the possession of a sixpence, the last they could command, a stranger suddenly halted before the door. Hostilities were suspended to look at him, for he stood long and silently gazing at the combatants, as if he were riveted to the ground whereon his feet rested. He was a young man of commanding appearance, and his whole figure exhibited those grand and manly proportions which might serve as a model of an Adam in Paradise. His hair was dark, and swept carelessly back from a very white forehead; his eyes were blue, and wore a strangely spiritual expression; and the lower part of

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