remained at his disposal to resume, if he had
been willing, a business which had hitherto been productive of only
disappointments and regrets. The family, not wishing to run further
risks, set sail for America, and settled in another Fairy Lawn, in
Susquehanna County, Pa., leaving Gerald and two younger sisters to
remain with their brother, a physician, who was at that time living in
the town of Adare. Here Gerald remained for two years, pounding drugs
and manipulating pills, ostensibly to study medicine, but in reality to
devise plots for projected dramas, and to sketch character and incident
for tales in prose and poetry. The pathway of his future career had
already been carefully mapped out. He had long pined in secret for a
literary career, and years only whetted his eagerness to put his
unspoken wish into practical execution. Like poor Kirke White, he felt
the irresistible influence of an unmistakable destiny drawing him, as he
fancied, from lowly walks to ways of loftier prospect and more uncertain
enterprise. In the prophetic fervor of anticipated triumph, he foresaw
himself the lion of the literary coterie, the courted favorite at titled
levees and fashionable dinner parties. He occasionally contributed short
essays and fugitive poems to the _Limerick Reporter_, a sheet of news on
which were wont to be chronicled the gossip of the city, critiques of
provincial dramas, statistics of the Baldoyle steeplechases, or the
latest speech by the Liberator. Sometimes he ran into the city to have a
chat with a young man, who had begun to be recognized in the circuit of
provincial journalism as a literary star of rising magnitude. The young
man was John Banim, whose noble services under trying circumstances
Gerald had reason some years later to experience and appreciate. During
the two years immediately preceding his departure for London, he devoted
his attention almost exclusively to dramatic composition. Banim's "Damon
and Pythias" appeared in 1821, and the success which had at once raised
its obscure author into prominence, must have had no slight influence in
confirming the resolution which Gerald had already made. A religious
motive, too, entered into the spirit and outlined the object and policy
of his work. His plays, when they should be produced, were not to
terminate with uproarious applause and calls for the "gifted author" at
the fall of the curtain. The spirit of the drama had at this time
wofully departed from t