href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41656@[email protected]#tom-moore-hears-of-a-political-appointment">Tom Moore hears of a Political Appointment

The Play, founded by Mr. Sayre on the same incidents as the novel, was produced by Messrs. Rich and Harris, with great success at the Herald Square Theatre, New York, on the evening of the Thirty-first of August, 1901, with the following cast:

Book One

TOM MOORE

Chapter One

TOM MOORE GOES ANGLING

Mr. Thomas Moore was certainly in a very cheerful mood. This was evidenced by the merry tune with which he was delighting himself, and a jealous-minded thrush, with head cocked on one side, waited with ill-concealed impatience for his rival to afford him the opportunity of entering into competition. As this was not forthcoming, the bird took wing with an angry flirt of the tail and mental objurgation levelled at the unconscious head of the dapper young Irishman, who lilted gayly as he wandered along the path worn in the sward of the meadow by the school children on their way to and from the institution of learning presided over by Mistress Elizabeth Dyke.

"The time I've lost in wooing,

In watching and pursuing

The light, that lies

In woman's eyes,

Has been my heart's undoing."

 

Moore paused in his ditty and sat down on a convenient stone, while he wiped his brow with a ragged silk handkerchief which, though of unmistakably ancient origin, was immaculately clean.

"Faith," he murmured, "there's no fiction in that last stanza. It's broken-hearted I am, or as near it as an Irishman can be without too much exertion."

He sighed almost unhappily, and drawing a knife from his breeches pocket proceeded to manufacture a whistle from the bark on the end of the long willow wand he had cut a few moments before to serve as a fishing-rod.

This last was accomplished after some little effort accompanied by much pursing of lips and knitting of brows.

His labors completed, Moore regarded the whistle with the critical approval of an expert, and putting it to his mouth blew a shrill blast. As the result was eminently satisfactory, he bestowed the toy in the crown of his beaver and, crossing his legs comfortably, proceeded to take his ease.

His appearance was decidedly attractive. While quite a little below middle size, his wiry figure was so well proportioned that in the absence of other men nearer the ordinary standard of height, he would have passed as a fine figure of a lad. He carried himself with easy grace, but affected none of the mincing, studied mannerisms of the dandy of the period. He had a round, jolly face, a pleasing though slightly satirical mouth, an impudent nose, and a pair of fine eyes, so brightly good-humored and laughingly intelligent, that no one could have looked into their clear depths without realizing that this was no ordinary youth. And yet at the period in his career from which dates the beginning of this chronicle Tom Moore's fortunes were at a decidedly low ebb. Disgusted and angry at the ill success which attended his attempts to sell his verses to the magazines and papers of Dublin, for at this time it was the exception, not the rule, when a poem from his pen was printed and paid for, Moore gathered together his few traps, kissed his mother and sisters good-bye, shook the hand of his father, then barrackmaster of an English regiment resident in Ireland, and hied himself to the sylvan beauties of the little town of Dalky. Here he secured lodgings for little more than a trifle and began the revision of his translation of the Odes of Anacreon, a task he had undertaken with great enthusiasm a year previous. Thus it was that he chanced to be wandering through the fields on fishing bent this bright and beautiful morning in the