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Mr. DOOLEY
In Peace and in War
Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
1899
Copyright, 1898, by the Chicago Journal
Copyright, 1898, by Small, Maynard & Company
First Edition (10,000 copies) November, 1898
Second Edition (10,000 copies) December, 1898
Third Edition (10,000 copies) January, 1899
Press of George H. Ellis, Boston, U.S.A.
TO W.H. TURNER
PREFACE.
Archey Road stretches back for many miles from the heart of an ugly cityto the cabbage gardens that gave the maker of the seal his opportunityto call the city "urbs in horto." Somewhere between the two—that is tosay, forninst th' gas-house and beyant Healey's slough and not far fromthe polis station—lives Martin Dooley, doctor of philosophy.
There was a time when Archey Road was purely Irish. But the Huns, turnedback from the Adriatic and the stock-yards and overrunning Archey Road,have nearly exhausted the original population,—not driven them out asthey drove out less vigorous races, with thick clubs and short spears,but edged them out with the more biting weapons of moderncivilization,—overworked and under-eaten them into more languidsurroundings remote from the tanks of the gas-house and the blastfurnaces of the rolling-mill.
But Mr. Dooley remains, and enough remain with him to save the ArcheyRoad. In this community you can hear all the various accents of Ireland,from the awkward brogue of the "far-downer" to the mild and aisyElizabethan English of the southern Irishman, and all the exquisitevariations to be heard between Armagh and Bantry Bay, with thedifference that would naturally arise from substituting cinders andsulphuretted hydrogen for soft misty air and peat smoke. Here also youcan see the wakes and christenings, the marriages and funerals, and theother fêtes of the ol' counthry somewhat modified and darkened byAmerican usage. The Banshee has been heard many times in Archey Road. Onthe eve of All Saints' Day it is well known that here alone the pookiesplay thricks in cabbage gardens. In 1893 it was reported that MalachiDempsey was called "by the other people," and disappeared west of thetracks, and never came back.
A simple people! "Simple, says ye!" remarked Mr. Dooley. "Simple liketh' air or th' deep sea. Not complicated like a watch that stops whinth' shoot iv clothes ye got it with wears out. Whin Father Butlerwr-rote a book he niver finished, he said simplicity was not wearin' allye had on ye'er shirt-front, like a tin-horn gambler with his di'mon'stud. An' 'tis so."
The barbarians around them are moderately but firmly governed,encouraged to passionate votings for the ruling race, but restrainedfrom the immoral pursuit of office.
The most generous, thoughtful, honest, and chaste people in the worldare these friends of Mr. Dooley,—knowing and innocent; moral, butgiving no heed at all to patented political moralities.
Among them lives and prospers the traveller, archæologist, historian,social observer, saloon-keeper, economist, and philosopher, who has notbeen out of the ward for twenty-five years "but twict." H