A story is told of his father, a
highly respected legal character in the Emerald Isle, that, on being
asked by a friend why his son had left the country, replied, 'By Jasus,
sir, it was high time: sure I am there's enough of the family left
behind. Is not his lady in a _promising_ way, and both his female
servants, and those of two or three of his friends, and are not both
mine in a similar situation? Zounds, sir, if he had remained here much
longer, there would not have been a single female in the whole country.
However, 'Good wine, they say, needs no Bushe,' so I shall leave him
unmarked by his family cognomen, lest this ~232~~should be taken as
a puff-card of his capabilities, and thereby add to the list of his
Cytherean exploits. In a late affair, when the colonel was called
out (but did not come), Sir Patrick beat about the Bushe for him very
judiciously, and by great skill in diplomacy enabled his friend to come
off second best. But here comes one who stands at odds with description,
and attracts more notice in Cheltenham than even the colonel, his
companions, and all the metropolitan visitory put together. If I was to
lend myself to the circulation of half the strange tales related of him
by the Chelts, I could fill a small-sized volume; but brevity is the
soul of wit, and the eccentric Mackey, with all his peculiarities and
strange fancies for midnight mastications, has a soul superior to the
common herd, and a 'heart and hand, open as day, to melting charity.
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