GSTON.

CHAPTER ONE.

DONNYBROOK FAIR.

Jack began his story thus:

Of course you've heard of Donnybrook Fair, close to the city of Dublin.
What a strange scene it was, to be sure, of uproar and wild confusion--
of quarrelling and fighting from beginning to end--of broken heads, of
black eyes, and bruised shins--of shouting, of shrieking and swearing--
of blasphemy and drunkenness in all its forms of brutality. Ay, and as
I've heard say, of many a deed of darkness, not omitting murder, and
other crimes not less foul and hateful to Him who made this beautiful
world, and gave to man a religion of love and purity. There the
rollicking, roaring, bullying, fighting, harum-scarum Irishman of olden
days had full swing for all the propensities and vile passions which
have ruined him at home, and gained him a name and a fame not to be
envied throughout the world. Often have I wondered whether, had a North
American Indian, or a South-Sea Islander, visited the place, he could
have been persuaded that he had come to a land of Christian men.
Certainly an angel from heaven would have looked upon the assemblage as
a multitude of Satan's imps let loose upon the world. They tell me that
the fair and its bedevilments have pretty well been knocked on the head.
I am glad of it, though I have never again been to the spot from the
day of which I am about to speak.

I remember very little of my childish life. Indeed, my memory is nearly
a blank up to the time to which I allude. That time was one of the
first days of that same Donnybrook Fair; but I remember _that_ and good
reason I have so to do. I was, however, but a small chap then, young in
years, and little as to size.

My father's name was Amos Williams. He came from England and settled in
Dublin, where he married my mother, who was an Irishwoman. Her name I
never heard. If she had relations, they did not, at all events, own
her. I suspect, from some remarks she once let drop which I did not
then understand, that they had discarded her because she had become a
Protestant when she married my father. She was gentle and pious, and
did her utmost, during the short time she remained on earth, to teach me
the truths of that glorious gospel to which, in many a trial, she held
fast, as a ship to the sheet-anchor with a gale blowing on a lee-shore.
She died young, carried off by a malignant fever. Her last prayers were
for my welfare here and hereafter. Had I always remem