M'FINNIGAN'S MISTAKE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3093, 27 May 1881, Page 3

M'FINNIGAN'S MISTAKE.

Young Bigley, the poet, was waited upon last week by a committee of one from the Oakland Land League, and who had in charge an entertainment they were about to perpetrate in that rural locality for the purpose of raising funds for ' the land of the homeless.' The committee, whose name was M'Finnigan, knew Bigley, and told the latter that they wanted some new and appropriate verses to sing at the entertainment in question, set to some well-known Irish air. After expressing himself heartily in favour of any course that would enable Irishmen to remain comfortably in Ireland, Bigley promised to work off a few stanzas and send them over. It happentd however, that Bigley was one of those despised beings, a native American, and as he had been refused a clerkship in the City Hall on that account, he determined to be avenged, especially as the place had been given instead to M'Finnigan, who was to sing the song referred to, as the ' favourite Irish baritone.'

Up to the night of the performance, however, the verses had not arrived, and it was only as M'Finnigan was about going on the stage that the manuscript came to hand. As the tune was ' Wearing of the Green,' with which the great baritone was quite familiar, the celebrity marched on and struck up. The first lines went:

And when the Treasurer of the League has gathered in the pence, He'll grab the sack some moonlight ni£*ht, and g-ently skip from hence.

Here M'F. looked surprised and cleared his throat, while the audience grevv breathless with ominous interest. Thinking, however, it would be suro to come right further clown Mac kept on :

And soon upon the Bois Boulogne, or on the Strand, he's seen, A'telling how he made his pile by roping in the Green.

' Great heavens !' exclaimed M'lTinnegan, ' I —cr —it seems —cr —' but they didn't allow him to finish. The president of the meeting rushed out and kicked the miserable warbler down into the audience, whioli slung him up again, after breaking up benches to hammer him with and dancing on his stomach, with terrific yells. If somebody hadn't turned off the gas long enough for him to escape, M'Finnigan would be under the daisies now. He is going to have the poet arrested for attempted manslaughter as soon as he is well enough to swear out a warrant, as he is confident the whole thing was a plot to have him assassinated, concoated out of pure envy by Bigly, who is a sort of complimentary benefit basso himself. —San Francisco Post.