The squire and Murtough then shook hands, and parted friends half an hour after they had met as foes; and even Dick contrived to forget his annoyance in an extra stoup of claret that day after dinner--filling more than one bumper in drinking _confusion_ to Handy Andy, which seemed a rather unnecessary malediction.
After the friendly parting of the foes (_pro tempore_), there was a general scatter of the party who had come to see the duel: and how strange is the fact, that as much as human nature is prone to shudder at death under the gentlest circumstances, yet men will congregate to be its witnesses when violence aggravates the calamity! A public execution or a duel is a focus where burning curiosity concentrates; in the latter case, Ireland bears the palm for a crowd; in the former, the annals of the Old Bailey can _amply_ testify. Ireland has its own interest, too, in a place of execution, but not in the same degree as England. They have been too used to hanging in Ireland to make it piquant: "_toujours perdrix_" is a saying which applies in this as in many other cases. The gallows, in its palmy days, was shorn of its terrors: it became rather a pastime. For the victim it was a pastime with a vengeance; for through it all time was past with him. For the rabble who beheld his agony, the frequency of the sight had blunted the edge of horror, and only sharpened that of unnatural excitement. The great school, where law should be the respected master, failed to inspire its intended awe;--the legislative lesson became a mockery; and death, instead of frowning with terror, grinned in a fool's cap from the scaffold.
This may be doubted now, when a milder spirit presides in the councils of the nation and on the bench; but those who remember Ireland not very long ago, can bear witness how lightly life was valued, or death regarded. Illustrative of this, one may refer to the story of the two basket-women in Dublin, who held gentle converse on the subject of an approaching execution.
"Won't you go see de man die to-morrow, Judy?"
"Oh no, darlin'," said Judy. (By-the-bye, Judy pronounced the _n_ through her nose, and said "_d_o.")
"And why won't you go, dear?" inquired her friend again.