Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants.

Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants.
Taught school and flogged his scholars, too
With a good health-inspiring cat,
My blessing on his old white hat! 
Tho’ scarce, entitled like the rest
By early advent, I think best
To name “The Orator of the West,”
James Spencer Lidstone, child of song,
The “man of memory,” vast and long,
Who had, reader you need not start,
All Milton’s Paradise by heart;
Strange mixture he of prose and rhyme,
Ridiculous, and the sublime
In him were singularly blended;
Where one began or the other ended,
It would be difficult to tell. 
He played his part in each so well,
James Spencer Lidstone, fare thee well! 
And ’mongst the ancient sons of fame
Who says that Dinny Cantlin’s name
Does not deserve a line or two
In these old chronicles most true? 
Dinny was just four feet in length,
Although a man of pith and strength,
His arm was always ready, too,
All rowdyism to subdue. 
When special constable one day,
He captured in some sudden fray
A fellow six feet high, or taller,
And held him firmly by the collar;
And Dinny, as he upward gazed
At the colossus, o’er him raised,
Exclaimed, “escape now, if you can,
You’re in the clutches of a man!”
Dinny had a commanding eye,
His hat was eighteen inches high
Come next to view, Denis O’Neill,
A ship carpenter, who laid the keel
Of many a vessel in his day,
And still he clinks and caulks away. 
James Finch, too, who died here of late,
Was one of those of ’28,
Or ’27 it may be,
Comes nearer to the certainty;
James Finch sledged stoutly with a will,
In the old forge on “Major’s Hill,”
In ’29, he once lay still
For fifteen minutes on the ground
Insensible to sight or sound,
’Twas a stone that almost killed him quite,
In a most lively faction fight
In Bytown’s celebrated fair,
When stones flew thickly through the air,
I can’t forget it, I was there;
Its history I’ll not jot down
Until I get to Upper Town. 
And Charles Rowan, well I know,
The reader sought for him ere now,
What shall I of friend Charlie say,
Who came from Connaught all the way? 
Who well can speak the celtic tongue
In which the Irish mintrels sung. 
When famous Malachi of old
The collar wore of beaten gold,
Torn fiercely from the haughty Dane
By his right arm in battle slain! 
Charlie is mild and full of meekness,
Horses with him have been a weakness: 
A clipper spanking between traces
He used to drive at trotting races,
And then his powers of selection
In liquor almost touch perfection. 
Next comes James Whitty, man of old,
Who once was a young sailor bold,
A quiet, little Wexford man,
Who warmed his jacket at Japan,
And “dashed his buttons” gaily, too,
In China with the pig-tailed crew;
Ere he in times that are no more
On Ottawa’s bosom tugged an oar. 
John Ashfield now in sight appears,
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Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.