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Neal Malone
by
“Don’t go,” said the wife.
“I WILL go,” said Neal, with vehemence; “I ‘ll go if the whole parish was to go to prevint me.”
In about another half-hour Neal sat down quietly to his business instead of going to the fair!
Much ingenious speculation might be indulged in upon this abrupt termination to the tailor’s most formidable resolution; but, for our own part, we will prefer going on with the narrative, leaving the reader at liberty to solve the mystery as he pleases. In the meantime we say this much; let those who cannot make it out carry it to their tailor; it is a tailor’s mystery, and no one has so good a right to understand it–except, perhaps, a tailor’s wife.
At the period of his matrimony Neal had become as plump and as stout as he ever was known to be in his plumpest and stoutest days. He and the schoolmaster had been very intimate about this time; but we know not how it happened that soon afterward he felt a modest, bride-like reluctance in meeting with that afflicted gentleman. As the eve of his union approached, he was in the habit, during the schoolmaster’s visits to his workshop, of alluding, in rather a sarcastic tone, considering the unthriving appearance of his friend, to the increasing lustiness of his person. Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph that sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The schoolmaster’s philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, “Neal, we are both receding from the same point; you increase in flesh, whilst I, Heaven help me, am fast diminishing.”
The tailor received these remarks with very boisterous mirth, whilst Mr. O’Connor simply shook his head and looked sadly upon his limbs, now shrouded in a superfluity of garments, somewhat resembling a slender thread of water in a shallow summer stream nearly wasted away and surrounded by an unproportionate extent of channel.
The fourth month after the marriage arrived, Neal, one day near its close, began to dress himself in his best apparel. Even then, when buttoning his waistcoat, he shook his head after the manner of Mr. O’Connor, and made observations upon the great extent to which it over-folded him.
“Well,” thought he with a sigh, “this waistcoat certainly DID fit me to a T; but it’s wonderful to think how–cloth stretches!”
“Neal,” said the wife, on perceiving him dressed, “where are you bound for?”
“Faith, FOR LIFE” replied Neal, with a mitigated swagger; “and I’d as soon, if it had been the will of Provid–“
He paused.
“Where are you going?” asked the wife a second time.
“Why,” he answered, “only to dance at Jemmy Connolly’s; I ‘ll be back early.”
“Don’t go,” said the wife.
“I’ll go,” said Neal, “if the whole counthry was to prevint me. Thunder an’ lightnin’, woman, who am I?” he exclaimed, in a loud, but rather infirm voice. “Am n’t I Neal Malone, that never met a MAN who’d fight him? Neal Malone, that was never beat by MAN! Why, tare an’ ouns, woman! Whoo! I’ll get enraged some time, an’ play the divil! Who’s afeard, I say?”
“DON’T GO,” added the wife a third time, giving Neal a significant look in the face.
In about another half-hour Neal sat down quietly to his business instead of going to the dance!
Neal now turned himself, like many a sage in similar circumstances, to philosophy; that is to say, he began to shake his head upon principle, after the manner of the schoolmaster. He would, indeed, have preferred the bottle upon principle; but there was no getting at the bottle except through the wife, and it so happened that by the time it reached him there was little consolation left in it. Neal bore all in silence; for silence, his friend had often told him, was a proof of wisdom.