A grown-up young lady, with yellow ringlets, in a black-and-white silk dress, paid a visit to my grandmother one day, when I heard myself described as "bold and saucy,"—heaven knows why, since I never uttered a word in that formidable presence, and felt less than a mouse\'s courage if I but accidentally encountered those severe black eyes. The young lady offered to show me her dolls. I never cared for dolls, and I went without enthusiasm. It was my first glimpse of girlish luxury. The room in which her treasures were kept seemed to me as large as a chamber of the palaces of story. There were trains, carriages, perambulators, about two dozen dolls of all sizes, with gorgeous wardrobes; there were beds, bonnets, parasols, kitchen utensils, dear little cups; babies in long clothes, peasants, dancing-girls, and queens with crowns on their heads and long cloaks. The young girl was one of the many extinguishable flames of my[Pg 99] uncle Lionel, destined, like Goethe, to sigh for one, and then another in sentimental freedom, and end in bondage of an execrable kind. She is blurred for me, but that palatial doll\'s chamber and all those undreamed-of splendours remain still a vivid vision, like the lovely pantomime, whither Dennis took me with his pockets full of oranges to suck between the acts. Oh, that bewildering paradisiacal sight of the fairies! the speechless emotions of the transformation scene! the thirst, the yearning, for short muslin skirts, and limelight, and feet twinkling rapturously in fairyland! The humours of the clown and the harlequin left me cold; for, being acquainted with the extreme tenderness of the human body through harsh experience, I could not understand the pleasure the clown found in continually banging and knocking down the harmless harlequin. Each unprovoked blow left me sadder and more harassed. I felt the old man must be very much hurt, and wondered why the audience seemed to enjoy his repeated discomfiture so hugely. But the fairy dancing was quite different. Here was an untempered joy that did not pass my comprehension. To be a fairy by night, and possess all the young girl\'s toys by day! This was the dream harshly broken[Pg 100] by the appearance of my sisters, themselves demure little fairies in green silk dresses and poky green silk bonnets.
They lured me out among the dead branches, where the robins were dolefully hopping in search of crumbs, and exclaimed together: "Oh, Angela, wait till you hear the news!"
What news? Why, I was to go away, across the sea, which was always awfully wet, like the pond, only bigger and deeper. A ship, they said, was like those little paper-boats the boys used to make at Kildare, and you sat in it and rocked up and down, unless a shark came and ate you up. Somebody told them that the English were dreadfully proud, and thought no end of themselves, and looked down on the Irish.
"But you must stand up for yourself, Angela. Tell them your father was king of Ireland lots of hundreds of years ago, and that long ago, when the kings lived, all your cousins and brothers were red-cross knights."
"What were red-cross knights?" I asked, deeply impressed.
"Oh, they were men who wore long cloaks with red crosses on them, and rode about on steeds."
"What\'s steeds?" I breathlessly inquired.
"Horses," was the pettish answer; "only you know they go quicker than horses, and knights always preferred steeds. And they took things from the rich and gave them to the poor."
"What things?" I again asked.
"Isn\'t she stupid? I declare she knows nothing. Why, food and money and clothes, to be sure. They\'ll say the Irish are dreadful ignorant and stupid when they see Angela, won\'t they?"
A great deal more was of course said between four passionate and voluble children; but all I remember of that winter afternoon was the stupendous news that I was going away in a ship soon across the sea to a foreign land, where I should be submitted to insult, perhaps torture, because I was Irish, if I were not previously devoured by a shark—a creature the more terrible because of my complete ignorance not only of its existence, but of its general features; and the mention of a new animal was something like the menace of the devil: large, luminous, potent, and indistinct. I already knew through Mary Jane that there was a Queen who put Irish people into prison, and entertained herself by hanging them at her leisure, and that evening I startled Mary Ann out of her senses by asking her if it was likely I should be hanged in England like[Pg 102] Robert Emmet. And then, in order that she should have a proper notion of the extent of my acquaintance with Robert Emmet, I stood in the middle of the kitchen, with my arms strenuously folded, my brows gathered in a fearful frown to reproduce the attitude of Robert Emmet in the dock, as depicted in the parlour of Mary Jane\'s mamma.
"You know the English hanged him \'cause he was Irish," I explained, extremely proud to impart my information. "Mary Jane told me so. When I fell in............