When daylight passed, night presented him with
amusements suitable to itself. No wake, for instance, could escape him;
a dance without young Phelim O'Toole would have been a thing worthy
to be remembered. He was zealously devoted to cock-fighting; on
Shrove-Tuesday he shouted loudest among the crowd that attended the
sport of throwing at cooks tied to a stake; foot-ball and hurling never
occurred without him. Bull-baiting--for it was common in his
youth--was luxury to him; and, ere he reached fourteen, every one knew
Phelim O'Toole as an adept at card-playing. Wherever a sheep, a leg of
mutton, a dozen of bread, or a bottle of whiskey was put up in a shebeen
house, to be played for by the country gamblers at the five and ten, or
spoil'd five, Phelim always took a hand and was generally successful. On
these occasions he was frequently charged with an over-refined
dexterity; but Phelim usually swore, in vindication of his own
innocence, until he got black in the face, as the phrase among such
characters goes.
The reader is to consider him now about fifteen--a stout, overgrown,
unwashed cub. His parents' anxiety that he should grow strong, prevented
them from training him to any kind of employment. He was eternally going
about in quest of diversion; and wherever a knot of idlers was to be
found, there was Phelim. He had, up to this period, never worn a shoe,
nor a single article of dress that had been made for himself, with the
exception of one or two pair of sheepskin small-clothes.
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