Characters
| Dr. Lucius O’Grady. | Constable Moriarity, R.I.C. |
| Timothy Doyle. | Tom Kerrigan, bandmaster. |
| Major Ken. | Rev. Father McCormack. |
| Thaddeus Golligher. | Lord Alfred Blakeney. |
| Horace P. Billing. | Mrs. de Courvy. |
| C. Gregg, district inspector. | Mrs. Gregg. |
| Sergeant Colgan, R.I.C. | Mary Ellen. |
Into Ballymoy, a sleepy little town in the west of Ireland, comes Horace P. Billing, one gentle summer day, and spins in the market place a tale of a certain General John Regan, who, he said, these many years agone had been born and had sailed from Ballymoy to free the oppressed people of Bolivia, and who was the great national hero of that Republic from that time to the present day.
Comes there to listen to his tale one Doctor Lucius O’Grady, whose nose can no more keep out of other people’s business than can his busy brain refrain from all manner of schemings or his tongue from uttering the grandest, gloriousest, whooping lies that the mouth of man e’er uttered.
To the American tourist he unreels anecdote and episode dealing with the romantic life of the great General while he had been yet a boy in Ballymoy. He sends Golligher, the editor of the Connaught Eagle, to show the American gentleman the birthplace of the General, a broken down cow-shed, in a nearby field.
The American leaves Ballymoy wildly excited and fermenting under the constant nagging of the doctor’s busy self and never resting tongue, and promises that he will be back in a few days, and that in the meantime, should the citizens of Ballymoy have enough patriotism in them to erect a statue of their great townie in the market place, he would contribute a hundred pounds towards it.
This sets the Doctor at work with even more (if possible) vim. He gets Doyle to promise to contribute ten pounds, the parish priest (though it nearly breaks the good father’s heart) ten also, Major Kent, the local landlord, another ten, and keeps the list himself—explaining that it is not necessary for him to put himself down for anything for that reason.
It develops that Doyle has a nephew in Dublin who is a mortuary sculptor, and has a statue of some deceased citizen on hand which was never paid for. This statue Doyle’s nephew agrees to sell to Ballymoy for some eighty-odd pounds. The Doctor arranges to buy it, thus figuring that there will be a balance of twenty pounds out of the American’s contribution to divide among themselves. This pleases Doyle, Father McCormack, and Golligher (who form the statue committee) very much; but unfortunately, it develops also that Doyle has neglected to get the money from the American for the statue before he left.
This does not stump the Doctor in the least, however. Among his plans for the unveiling of the statue is the appearance of Mary Ellen, the servant in Doyle’s hotel, as a green fairy, and the appearance of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to make a speech. He suggests that when the Lord Lieutenant appears, they ask him for five hundred pounds for a pier—as the town already has but five or six piers—and that the money for the statue be taken out of that. The Major objects to this, but the Doctor’s ability to explain does not desert him, and the Major is satisfied.
The great day of the unveiling finally arrives. The statue from the mortuary sculptor in Dublin is standing in the market place, with a veil over it. A letter comes from the Lord Lieutenant to the effect that he has never heard of General John Regan, can find no record of him in any history of any country on the globe, and, in the person of his aide de camp, Lord Al Blakeney, protests and accuses Ballymoy of having put a hoax over on him and all that sort of bally rot, by Jove.
The Doctor rises to the occasion beautifully. The aide de camp is made to make a speech as a representative of the Lord Lieutenant, and Mary Ellen unveils the statue, disclosing a hideous caricature of a grinning dead man in an ill-fitting business suit.
At that moment the American appears, explains grandly that there is no such man as General John Regan, and says that if the Doctor can prove to him that the General is not a fiction he himself will give the five hundred pounds for the pier—as, he says, “the show is worth it!”
The Doctor merely asks the American to prove to the satisfaction of the assembled townsfolk that the General does not exist.
Billing gives it up and writes out a check to the Doctor’s order for five hundred pounds, while the Doctor poses grandly before the cheers of the assembled and admiring populace of Ballymoy.2
Here, too, is an outline which led to a very dramatic sermon. Obviously it is a satisfactory summary of the story underlying the sermon, but just what it would give a reader, if it were a perfect scenario, is lacking—namely, suggestion of the emotional treatment of the scenes which is to make them worth the manager’s or actor’s producing:
AT THE TOP OF THE TENEMENT
The arrangement of the platform will suggest the bare condition of the home in the first part of the sermon, and in the second part will show the improved condition a year later.