was not to be resisted--whack--
whack--whack! Down came the heavy stick of a sturdy Irishman upon that
of my father. "Get up out of that, and defend yourselves!" sung out
their assailants. Most of his companions rushed out to avenge the
insult offered them, but my father made no answer. Numbers joined from
all directions--shillelahs were flourished rapidly, and the scrimmage
became general. I ran to the front of the tent and clapped my hands,
and shouted with sympathy. Now the mass of fighting, shrieking men
swayed to one side, now to the other; now they advanced, now they
retreated, till by degrees the fight had reached a considerable distance
from the tent.

I then went back to my place by my father's side, wondering that he did
not get up to join the fray. I listened, he breathed, but he did not
speak. Still I thought he must be awake. "Father, father," said I,
"get up, do. It's time to go home, sure now." I shook him gently, but
he made no reply. At length I could hear no sound proceeding from his
lips. I cried out in alarm. The keeper of the booth saw that something
was wrong, and came and looked curiously into his face. He lifted up my
father's hand. It fell like lead by his side.

"Why won't father speak to me?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"He'll never speak again! Your father's dead, lad," answered the man in
a tone of commiseration.

With what oppressive heaviness did those words strike on my young heart,
though at that time I did not fully comprehend the extent of my loss,--
that I should never again hear the tone of his voice--that we were for
ever parted in this world--that I was an orphan, without a human being
to care for me. But though bewildered and confused at that awful
moment, the words he had uttered as we left home rung strangely in my
ears--"Lad, I'll show you what life is." Too truly did he show me what
death was. Often and often have I since seen the same promise fulfilled
in a similar fearful way. What men call _life_ is a certain road to
_death_; death of the body, death of the soul. Of course I did not
understand this truth in those days; not indeed till long, long
afterwards, when I had gone through much pain and suffering, and had
been well-nigh worn-out. I was then very ignorant and very simple, and
I should probably have been vicious also had not my mother watchfully
kept me out of the way of bad example; and even after she was taken from
me, I was prevented