should not possess the latter very satisfactory means of
subsistence; and it was necessary, if I wished to support myself like a
gentleman, that I should choose some calling by which I could at least
obtain an income, supposing that I had not the talent to realise a large
fortune.

My father, Captain Michael Kearney, had a small estate, but it was
slightly encumbered, like many another in old Ireland; and he had no
intention of beggaring my brother and sister in order to benefit me. In
a certain sense, it is true, they were provided for. Ellen had married
Captain Patrick Maloney of the Rangers, who had, however, little beyond
his pay to live on. My younger brother, Barry, had entered the navy;
but as he drew fifty pounds a year and occasionally other sums from my
father's pocket, it cannot be said that he was off his hands. I also
had once thought of becoming a sailor, for the sake of visiting foreign
lands; but I had allowed the time to pass, and was now considered too
old to go to sea. I then took a fancy for the army; but my father
declared that he could not afford to purchase a commission for me, and I
had no chance of getting one in any other way. I talked of the law; but
when I heard of the dry books I should have to study, and the drier
parchments over which I should have to pore, I shuddered at the thought,
and hastily abandoned the idea.

My kind aunt, Honor Molloy,--the sister of my mother, who had been dead
some years,--pathetically urged me to enter the church, in the hope, as
she said, that that would keep me in the right way; but I honestly felt
that the church was not my vocation, and that I was much more likely to
go the wrong way if I assumed an office for which I was unfit. Then she
proposed that I should become a doctor; but I declared that I hated
physic, and could never bring myself to drug my fellow-creatures with
stuff which I would not take myself. My father offered to try to get me
into a government office, though he acknowledged that he had but slight
interest with people in authority, and that I might have a long time to
wait before I could obtain a satisfactory appointment. He suggested, in
the meantime, that I might become a clerk in a mercantile house, and
that I might one day become a partner; but that day seemed so very far
off in the perspective, that I begged he would not trouble himself about
the matter, deciding rather to seek for some government appointment,
either at home