Pro patria Author:William Mackay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Pateiot's Boast. It was a countryman of mine who wrote about the Patriot's Boast—which he declares to be that Where'er we roam, His fir... more »st, best country ever ia at home. It is a pretty sentiment, and although Oliver Goldsmith spent the greater part of his life in the vicinity of Fleet Street, London, I have no doubt he felt sincerely what he wrote—when he wrote it. I have already owned to the fervour of my personal love of county, and have confessed that it was as much a part of my nature as original sin. I may have been unconscious of the sacred possession till circumstances educed it. But there it lay,like the gold in an Australian gully, or the pearl in a submerged oyster. The condition of our county may have prevented an earlier appreciation of the fact that we were no better than a nation of slaves. The very soil was in league with the oppressor to deceive us. As a boy I beheld the earth producing plentifully ; the meadow land rich and of a greenness incomparable; the corn waving gold in the August air; and the pretty flower of the potato plant beautifully indicating the prodigious murphies that ripened beneath. The turf smoke ascended in thin blue columns from the cotter's cabin; the children laughed and gambolled in the garden patch ; and their fathers, returning from work, looked for all the world as though there was nothing wrong with their native land. But I soon learned how deceptive were such appearances. How the hilarity of mycountrymen was a splendid hypocrisy; and how, beneath a seemingly peaceful exterior, there slumbered the fire of a volcano, which might at any moment cover the land with destruction. I find it difficult to fix an exact date. But I must have come to a knowledge of the truth some time after making the acquai...« less