The Life and Adventures of a Limb of the Law

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: terests of the crown when his own interests were in jeopardy. Two characters more odious and generally detested by the people of Ireland than those of a tithe proctor and an exciseman, could not possibly be selected; such, however, were my family connections. My mother was a plain homely woman, and by no...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: terests of the crown when his own interests were in jeopardy. Two characters more odious and generally detested by the people of Ireland than those of a tithe proctor and an exciseman, could not possibly be selected; such, however, were my family connections. My mother was a plain homely woman, and by no means the most accomplished in the world; yet she supplied the want of refinement by the assiduity and attention she bestowed on her family; her sole delight consisted in endeavouring to promote the comfort and happiness of her children, and she was, in truth, a most exemplary woman. My father, on the other hand, (who carried on the business of a tailor) was of a disposition the very reverse of my mother, being both indolent and extravagant; so that what the one heaped together with the assistance of her relations and by her own care and industry, was wasted and squandered by the other in the ale-house, whither he used to repair every evening, and seldom returned home till midnight. Two tempers so extremely different could not be expected to have enjoyed much domestic felicity. My mother though passionate, very soon forgot the cause of her anger, and was easily reconciled to her most implacable enemy; my father knowing well the temper he had to deal with, and how easily he could obtain forgiveness, imposed on her goodnature, and went on from one excess to another until he became totally callous and indifferent to every thing around him. With stifled feelings of despair and despondency my mother observed the change in her husband's behaviour, and remonstrated frequently on the inevitable ruin that awaited him if he persisted in the course which he was pursuing; but these representations were treated by him as woman's fears, and beneath the notice of a man enamoured of a drop...