The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foolish Lovers, by St. John G. ErvineCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloadingor redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do notchange or edit the header without written permission.Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of thisfile. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can alsofind out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971*******These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****Title: The Foolish LoversAuthor: St. John G. ErvineRelease Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9461] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was firstposted on October 3, 2003]Edition: 10Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO=8859-1*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOLISH LOVERS ***Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, and PG Distributed ProofreadersTHE FOOLISH LOVERSBYST. JOHN G. ERVINENew York1920TO MY MOTHERwho asked me to write a story without any "Bad words" in it;andTO MRS. J. ...
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foolish Lovers, by St. John G. Ervine
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**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: The Foolish Lovers
Author: St. John G. Ervine
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9461] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first
posted on October 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO=8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOLISH LOVERS ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, and PG Distributed ProofreadersTHE FOOLISH LOVERS
BY
ST. JOHN G. ERVINE
New York
1920
TO MY MOTHER
who asked me to write a story without any "Bad words" in it;
and
TO MRS. J. O. HANNAY
who asked me to write a story without any "Sex" in it.THE FIRST BOOK OF THE FOOLISH LOVERS
Why, 'tis an office of discovery, love!
The Merchant of Venice.
Love unpaid does soon disband.
ANDREW MARVELLTHE FIRST CHAPTER
I
If you were to say to an Ulster man, "Who are the proudest people in Ireland?" he would first of all stare at you as if he had
difficulty in believing that any intelligent person could ask a question with so obvious an answer, and then he would reply,
"Why, the Ulster people, of course!" And if you were to say to a Ballyards man, "Who are the proudest people in Ulster?"
he would reply … if he deigned to reply at all … "A child would know that! The Ballyards people, of course!"
It is difficult for anyone who is not a native of the town, to understand why the inhabitants of Ballyards should possess so
great a pride in their birthplace. It is not a large town … it is not even the largest town in the county … nor has it any
notable features to distinguish it from a dozen other towns of similar size in that part of Ireland. Millreagh, although it is
now a poor, scattered sort of place, was once of great importance: for the mail-boats sailed from its harbour to Port
Michael until the steamship owners agreed that Port Michael was too much exposed to the severities of rough weather,
and chose another harbour elsewhere. Millreagh mourns over its lost glory, attributable in no way to the fault of Millreagh,
but entirely to the inscrutable design of Providence which arranged that Port Michael, and not Kirkmull, should lie on the
opposite side of the Irish Sea; and every Sunday morning, after church, and sometimes on Sunday afternoon, the people
walk along the breakwater to the lighthouse and remind each other of the days when their town was of consequence. "We
spent a hundred and fifty thousand pounds on our harbour," they say to each other, "and then the Scotch went and did the
like of that!"—the like of that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation. Millreagh does not admit that it has
suffered any more than a temporary diminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastful prophecies of
the fortune and repute that will come to it when the engineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes
an article on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the Newsletter or the Whig, and for weeks afterwards Millreagh lives in a
fever of expectancy; for whatever else may be said about the Tunnel, this is certain to be said of it, that it will start, in
Ireland, from Millreagh. On that brilliant hope, Millreagh, tightening its belt, lives in a fair degree of happiness, eking out its
present poverty by fishing and by letting lodgings in the summer.
Pickie, too, has much reputation, more, perhaps, than Millreagh, for it is a popular holiday town and was once described
in the Evening Telegraph as "the Blackpool of Ireland." This description, although it was apt enough, offended the more
pretentious people in Pickie who were only mollified when the innocent reporter, in a later article, altered the description
to, "the Brighton of Ireland." With consummate understanding of human character, he added, remembering the Yacht
Club, that perhaps the most accurate description of Pickie would be "the Cowes of Ireland." In this way, the reporter, who
subsequently became a member of parliament and made much money, pleased the harmless vanity of the lower, the
middle and the upper classes of Pickie; and for a time they were "ill to thole" on account of the swollen condition of their
heads, and it became necessary to utter sneers at "ham-and-egg parades" and "the tripper element" and to speak loudly
and frequently of the superior merits of Portrush, "a really nice place," before they could be persuaded to believe that
Pickie, like other towns, is inhabited by common human beings.
Ballyards never yielded an inch of its pride of place to Millreagh or to Pickie. "What's an oul' harbour when there's no boat
in it?" Ballyards said to Millreagh; and, "Sure, the man makes his livin' sellin' sausages!" it said to Pickie when Pickie
bragged of the great grocer who had joined the Yacht Club in order that he might issue a challenge for the Atlantic Cup.
Tunnels and attractive seaboards were extraneous things that might bring fortune, but could not bring merit, to those lucky
enough to possess them; but Ballyards had character … its men were meritable men … and Ballyards would not
exchange the least of its inhabitants for ten tunnels. Nor did Ballyards abate any of its pride before the ancient and
indisputable renown of Dunbar, which distils a whiskey that has soothed the gullets of millions of men throughout the
world. When Patrickstown bragged of its long history … it was once the home of the kings of Ulster … and tried to make
the world believe that St. Patrick was buried in its cathedral, Ballyards, magnificently imperturbed, murmured: "Your
population is goin' down!"; nor does it manifest any respect for Greenry, which has a member of parliament to itself and
has twice the population of Ballyards. "It's an ugly hole," says Ballyards, "an' it's full of Papishes!"
Millreagh and Pickie openly sneer at Ballyards, and Greenry affects to be unaware of it, but the pride of Ballyards
remains unaltered, incapable of being diminished, incapable even of being increased … for pride cannot go to greater
lengths than the pride of Ballyards has already gone … and in spite of contention and denial, it asserts, invincibly
persistent, that it is the finest and most meritabie town in Ireland. When sceptics ask for proofs, Ballyards replies, "We
don't need proofs!" A drunken man said, on a particularly hearty Saturday night, that Ballyards was the finest town in the
world, but the general opinion of his fellow-townsmen was that this claim, while very human, was excessively expressed.
London, for example, was bigger than Ballyards. So was New York!…. The drunken man, when he had recovered his
sobriety, admitted that this was true, but he contended, and was well supported in his contention, that while London and
New York might be bigger than Ballyards, neither of these cities were inhabited by men of such independent spirit as the
men of Ballyards. A Ballyards man, he asserted, was beholden to no one. Once, and once only, a Millreagh man said that
a Ballyards man thought he was being independent when he was being ill-bred; but Ballyards people would have none of
this talk, and, after they had severely assaulted him, they drove the Millreagh man back to his "stinkin' wee town" and
forbade him ever to put his foot in Ballyards again. "You know what you'll get if you do. Your head in your hands!" was the
threat they shouted after him. And surely the wide world knows the story … falsely credited to other places … which every
Ballyards child learns in its cradle, of the man who, on being rebuked in a foreign city for spitting, said to those who
rebuked him, "I come from the town of Ballyards, an' I'll spit where I like!"II
It was his pride in his birthplace which sometimes made John MacDermott hesitate to accept the advice of his Uncle
Matthew and listen leniently to the advice of his Uncle William. Uncle Matthew urged him to seek his fortune in foreign
parts, but Uncle William said, "Bedam to foreign parts when you can live in Ballyards!" Uncle Matthew, who had never
been out of Ireland in his life, had much knowledge of the works of English writers, and from these works, he had drawn a
romantic picture of London. The English city, in his imagination, was a place of marvellous adventures, far mere
wonderful than the ancient city of Bagdad or the still more ancient city of Damascus, wherein anything might happen to a
man who kept his eyes open or, for the matter of that, shut. He never tired of reading Mr. Andrew Lang's Historical
Mysteries, and he liked to think of himself suddenly being accosted in the street by some dark stranger demanding to
know whether he had a taste for adventure. Uncle Matthew was not quite certain what he would do if such a thing were to
happen to him: whether to proclaim himself as eager for anything that was odd and queer or to threaten the stranger with
the police. "You might think a man was going to lead you to a hidden place, mebbe, where there'd be a lovely woman
waiting to receive you, and you blindfolded 'til you were shown into the room where she was … and mebbe you'd be
queerly disappointed, for it mi