It Was Cleared
By Eight, As The Landlady Promised; We Had It To Ourselves Till
Twelve, And Could Scarcely Hear The Music.
It was a most
respectable dance, a fortnightly gathering got up by the
neighboring settlers, most of them young married people, and
there was no drinking at all.
I wrote to you for some time,
while Mr. Nugent copied for himself the poems "In the Glen" and
the latter half of "The River without a Bridge," which he recited
with deep feeling. It was altogether very quiet and peaceful.
He repeated to me several poems of great merit which he had
composed, and told me much more about his life. I knew that no
one else could or would speak to him as I could, and for the last
time I urged upon him the necessity of a reformation in his life,
beginning with the giving up of whisky, going so far as to tell
him that I despised a man of his intellect for being a slave to
such a vice. "Too late! too late!" he always answered, "for such
a change." Ay, TOO LATE. He shed tears quietly. "It might have
been once," he said. Ay, MIGHT have been. He has excellent
sense for every one but himself, and, as I have seen him with a
single exception, a gentleness, propriety, and considerateness of
manner surprising in any man, but especially so in a man
associating only with the rough men of the West. As I looked at
him, I felt a pity such as I never before felt for a human being.
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