tim o'connor -- who was de-
scended from the o'conors with one n -- started life as a poet and an enthusiast.his mother had designed him for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a literary style of great beauty and an income of modest proportions.he fell in with men who talked of art for art's sake, -- though what right they had to speak of art at all nobody knew, -- and little by little his view of life and love became more or less pro-fane.he met a woman who sucked his heart's blood, and he knew it and made no protest; nay, to the great amusement of the fellows who talked of art for art's sake, he went the length of marrying her.he could not in decency explain that he had the tra-ditions of fine gentlemen behind him and so had to do as he did, because his friends might not have understood.he laughed at the days when he had thought of the priest-hood, blushed when he ran across any of those tender and exquisite old verses he had written in his youth, and became addicted to absinthe and other less peculiar drinks, and to gaming a little to escape a madness of ennui.
as the years went by he avoided, with more and more scorn, that part of the world which he denominated philistine, and con-sorted only with the fellows who flocked about jim o'malley's saloon.he was pleased with solitude, or with these convivial wits, and with not very much else beside.jim o'malley was a sort of irish poem, set to inspiring measure.he was, in fact, a hibernian m?cenas, who knew better than to put bad whiskey before a man of talent, or tell a trite tale in the presence of a wit.the recountal of his disquisitions on politics and other cur-rent matters had enabled no less than three men to acquire national reputations; and a number of wretches, having gone the way of men who talk of art for art's sake, and dying in foreign lands, or hospitals, or asylums, having no one else to be homesick for, had been homesick for jim o'malley, and wept for the sound of his voice and the grasp of his hearty hand.