Irish Jesuit Province

Clavis Acrostica. A Key to "Dublin Acrostics". No. 39Source: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 26, No. 305 (Nov., 1898), pp. 608-609Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499357 .

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( 608 )

CLAVIS ACROSTICA.

A KEY TO " DUBLIN ACROSTICS."

No. 39.

W TE have received sundry remonstrances against our recently introduced arrangement of giving acrostic and solution

in the same month. J. C. confesses that he is unable, when sorely puzzled by a light, to refrain from glancing at the subse quent revelations. To preserve him from temptation, we revert to our former plan of giving the answer in the following month.

We may throw here into the bargain an acrostic which recent military events suggested to an ingenious correspondent, C.L W.

A title strange, the mouths of men I fill,

Cut me in two, you find a title still.

1. Faster than a train.

2. Born of the brain.

3. A cutter of grain.

This is an up-to-date acrostic; but, going back to the chief classio in acrostic literature, the little quarto of " Dublin Acrostics," here is the 39th of them, by the clever young barrister, John Kirby, who, if he had li'ved, would now be a venerable judge.

I. I rang along the serried line

When rode to war the Geraldine.

II. A well-known proverb prays that I

May rest in lone tianquillity.

Ill I rank with kings-though plain my state,

Than I what monarch o'er more great?

1. The poet sings my heavenly leap,

2. In dear old nursery me.

3. I doze my days in ivied keep.

4. Not made, though brewed should be.

K.

The intelligent reader does not need to be reminded that the third of these couplets describes the wchole, made up here (as the number of " lights " shows us) of two words of four letters each.

To give another hint, we may remark that the description of the

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in Memory of Mary Furlong. 609

historical personage whose name is here cut in two shows that Mr. IKirby was a disciple of Thomas Carlyle.

No. 39, therefore, is left in its " legitimate obscurity " till next month; but we may deal summarily with C. T. W. as a fint

offender. Sirdlar is the title so frequently given of late to Sir Herbert Kitchener, now Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. The word that begins with S and ends with D is "sound," " idea " is

born of the brain; and, if " cutter of grain " is not ' razor," I

give it up. (Twenty-four hours later, I think of "reaper," and add it to the proofsheet.)

IN MEMORY OF MARY FURLONG.

LONG before her time, as her loving friends are tempted to say rashly, Mary Furlong has been taken from this strange

world of human life. Those who have been familiar with her name in these pages, as the writer of many sweet and graceful poems, will like to know something about her, now that her name will appear no more, now that she is only an amiable memory, like Attie O'Brien and Frances Wynne and Rose Kavanagh and

many another. Though she was young and only beginning the sterner work

of life, Mary Furlong was the eldest of four sisters who bad no brother. It was she probably who wrote the inscription on the tombstone beneath which she is now buried in the beautiful old churchyard of Tallaght, County Dublin, holy with memories of St. Maelruan and many another in ancient times, and in our own

day the beloved home of the brilliant Dominican, Father Thomas Burke. " In loving memory of James Walter Furlong, of Old Bawn, Tallaght, who died June 3rd, 1897, aged 52 years, and of Mary, his wife, who died August 2 th, 1897, aged 48 years. Also

their daughter Katie, who died July 27th, 1894, aged 22 years." It will be noticed that MIrs. Furlong stayed less than three

months after her husband; and only four years have separated the youngest and the eldest of their children. The three orphan sisters tore themselves away from their beloved Old Bawn as quickly as possible after their second bereavement. Mary had already qualified herself as a professional nurse in Madame

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