The Irish Way,

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 12 August 1905, Page 10

The Irish Way,

Year after year my grandfather would declare that no power on earth would induce him to pay his income-tax. The collector, a soft-spoken, easy-going person, accustomed to giving the roft answer which turned away the universal wrath, knew my grandfather and his ways. "Income-tax, indeed !" my grandfather would say with a splendid sprinkling of forcible words,, "I've no income except what belongs to my creditors. A nice Government, indeed, that takes away a man's income and then asks him to pay a tax on it. If you want to know where my income is, it's in the pockets of my tenants. Make them pay my mii come-tax." "Sure, it's true for you," | the collector, whose name, was Whelan and ought to have been Wheedlin', would say, turning the whites of his eyes to the skies. "Sure it's a cruel hardship on you. If I wasn't a Government official myself, us sayin* *Bad luck to their Land Acts P I'd be." "You're a decent fellow, Whelan," my grandfather would remark invariably, "I wonder why , you ever took to so dirty a trade." Up to tha last day my grandfather always , refused to pay. The last day we always had Mr. Whelan as' our guest. He used to sit alone in a chilly drawing-room, and would receive messages through Mary j Kate Flavin, the parlour-maid. "The j master says if you'll give it up you're to have your dinner and a glass of grog. j If you won't give it up, it's time you'd ; be goin' home." He never did go home, and he always bad his dinner and a glass of grog and hie tea to follow. It wasn't in my grandfather to be inhospitable. Since Mr. \\nelan was his guest willy-nilly, why, there were worse fellows than Whelan to smoke a pipo with and drink a glass of grog with. Mr. Whelan used to get him to talk of his boyhood in the glens of Wicklow. That always put my grandfather in a softened mood. To the lo,st moment he would swear that he would not pay. At the last moment, oV- nearly the last moment, he' invariably did. Once 'I remember he was moved to pay by Mr. Whelan dropping his face, into his hands arid beginning to weep. "You won't pay,"- he sobbed, "and I couldn't distrain on you. I'll pay the tax myself, although I'm a poor man and I've an old mother and a poor idiot boy of a brother to support.!' "Well, I'm dashed!" said my grandfather—only he didn't say "dashed" "I never thought to see a tax collector crying, and because of me! I'm dashed *if it isn't worth the money. , Where's the pen and ink and my cheque book?" In an evil . hour for the revenue in that particular district, Mr. Whelan was ■promoted, and was replaced by a youth with sleek hair parted down tho middle, and . the name of Evan Lord Llewellyn Jones. The first time he called for the income-tax and my father replied that he wasn't going to pay it, he said with an aghast visage, " Then we'll distrain." "Distrain and be dashed!" my grandfather said, taking a. leaf from the Iron Duke- on a certain famous occasion. "I never have paid, and I won't pay now." It is a way my grandfather has acquired of believing what he wishes to believe. "You never have pa-id!" Mr. Jones said, with excessive horror. "Never have paid! The income-tax! Why, everyone who has an income must" pay the tax." His mind was running on arrears of income-tax, making up sums in arithmetic .which amounted to an incredible total.'' "Never paid your income-taxi" he said, in a distraught way, as- he went off. "I've never heard the like. To be sure, you must pay!" There was no whisky for Mr. Jones, no ' chat by the fire, no seat at the hospitable board. "An impudent Welsh puppy!" said my grandfather. "Wasn't an Irishman good enough to do their dirty work without foisting a Welshman on us? I'm dashed if I'm going to be walked over by a Welshman. I won't pay, not if they took the best horse in my stables, and that's a mare, Wild Rosebud. I'll win the Grand National with her 'yet. ! '"Poor Whelan ! Now, he was a decent fellow, only too good for their dirty work." Mr. Jones dropped notice after notice at the hall door. My grandfather i set out the notices in a row along the \ parlour chimney-piece, and surveyed them with the pride of an Indian contemplating his * scalps. "Let them distrain," he said, gloomily, on the last day of grace, as he cleaned out his pipe for an after-dinner smoke; "but if .they lay a hand on Wild Rosebud, I'll mako Europe ring with it." He was interrupted by a rat-tat at the distant halldoor. "That dashed Welshman again !" my grandfather said, with a glare in his eye. 'However, it wasn't the Welshman. It was the long-lost Whelan, and the rapproachment between my grandfather ' and him was touching. My grandfather was simmering, boiling over, with the tale of his wrongs at the hands of theWelshman. However, before he could begin, Mr. Whelan, who had sunk into the chimney-corner, with his pipe and his glass, just as in old times, anticipated him. "I've come to talk to N you about the income-tax, sir," he said, in his most wheedling voice. "Poor Jones is in despair. Ho came to me an hour ! ago^ — in fact, the poor fellow's waiting j outside ; we drove out to you as fnst j as an outside car would take us. He's i new to the business, and, as he says, j if a man of your standing and influence refußes to pay the income-tax, what is he going to do with the others? Why, it might be a revolution, sir, a revolution ! " Supposing everyone refused to I P&yl" 1 "And a dashed good thing too," said, my grandfather. "I paid you, . Whelan. 1 You humbugged it out of me. After all, i you're an Irishman, if you are a tax collector. But I'll never pay the Welshman. By Heavens, I've stood things from the Welshman that make my blood boil to think on. I'd rather go to prison : than pay the Welshman. And, by Heav- | en, if he comes here again I'll make | him eat his own notices." [ "Mr. Whelan was staring at my grandfather. "A Welshman !" he repeated. "Jones a Welshman ! He's as geed an Irishman as ever walked." "And if he isi" my grandfather demanded furiously, "what does he mean by his dashed 1 name?" "I thought it a queer name myself when I heard it first," Mr. Whelan conceded. "But aure, you wouldn't be blaming the poor boy for the name his parent* gave him? Ah, sure, you know them, sir. Rose Aherne was his mother's name. She lived above on the hill. Now I come to think of it, wasn't her father, Michael Aherne, a tenant of your own? She married on of the Jonenes of the Glen of Moy, a Wicklow man, like yourself?" . "Rose Aherne," my grandfather said, his eye kindling ; "I remember her well. There weren't many prettier girls than Rose. And Bob Jones too ; hia father kept a flour mill at Moy. To think of me taking Rose Aherne's son for a Welshman! It waa the fault of his dashed name ! Rose Aherne's son ! Hg'k waiting outside, you Bay? and there's a bitter blast down from the hill. Why, I danced with Rose at her own wedding. There wasn't on ankle or an instep like hern in tho three parishes. Ask him in to have a glass of grog. Rose Aherne's son ! Whrro'H the pen and ink aiyl my cheque book?"— .-Katharine Tynan, in the L Daily M&iL