is, Hickman, that is, I cannot afford to stand it. What is
fifteen thousand a year to a man like me, who must support his rank, or
be driven to the purgatorial alternative of being imprisoned on his own
estate? Hickman, you have no bowels for me, although you can have for
the hard-fisted boors on my property, who wont pay up as they ought, and
all through your indolence and neglect. You must send me money, get it
where you will; beg, borrow, rob, drive, cant, sell out--for money I
must have. Two thousand within a fortnight, and no disappointment,
or I'm dished. You know not the demands upon me, and therefore you,
naturally enough, think very easily--much too easily--of my confounded
difficulties. If you had an opera girl to keep, as I have--and a
devilish expensive appendage the affectionate jade is--perhaps you might
feel a little more Christian sympathy for me than you do. If you had the
expense of my yacht--my large stud at Melton Mowbry and Doncaster, and
the yearly deficits in my betting book, besides the never ending train
of jockies, grooms, feeders, trainers, _et hoc genus omne_--to meet, it
is probable, old boy, you would not feel so boundless an interest, as
you say you do, in the peace and welfare of another man's tenantry, and
all this at that other man's expense. You're confoundedly unreasonable,
Hickman. Why feel, or pretend to feel, more for these fellows, their
barelegged wives, and ragged brats, than you do for a nobleman of rank,
to whom you are deeply indebted. I mean you no offence, Hickman; you are
in other respects an honest fellow enough, and if possessed of only a
little less heart, as the times go, and more skill in raising money from
these people, you would be invaluable to such a distressed devil as I
am. As it is, I regret to say, that you are more a friend to my tenantry
than to myself, which is a poor qualification for an agent. In fact, we,
the Irish aristocracy living here, or absentees as you call us, instead
of being assailed by abuse, want of patriotism, neglect of duties, and
all that kind of stuff, have an especial claim upon the compassion of
their countrymen. If you knew what we, with limited means and encumbered
properties, must suffer in attempting to compete with the aristocracy
of this country, who are enormously rich, you would say that we deserve
immortal credit for holding out and keeping up appearances as we
do--not that I think we always come off scott-free from their ridicul