Phineas Finn
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Trollope
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Title: Phineas Finn
The Irish Member
Author: Anthony Trollope
Release Date: April 7, 2006 [eBook #18000]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT BookishMall.com EBOOK PHINEAS FINN***
E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
PHINEAS FINN
The Irish Member
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
First published in serial form in St. Paul's
Magazine
beginning in 1867 and in book form in 1869
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane
Dr. Finn, of Killaloe, in county Clare, was as well known in
those parts,—the confines, that is, of the counties Clare,
Limerick, Tipperary, and Galway,—as was the bishop himself who
lived in the same town, and was as much respected. Many said that
the doctor was the richer man of the two, and the practice of his
profession was extended over almost as wide a district. Indeed the
bishop whom he was privileged to attend, although a Roman Catholic,
always spoke of their dioceses being conterminate. It will
therefore be understood that Dr. Finn,—Malachi Finn was his full
name,—had obtained a wide reputation as a country practitioner in
the west of Ireland. And he was a man sufficiently well to do,
though that boast made by his friends, that he was as warm a man as
the bishop, had but little truth to support it. Bishops in Ireland,
if they live at home, even in these days, are very warm men; and
Dr. Finn had not a penny in the world for which he had not worked
hard. He had, moreover, a costly family, five daughters and one
son, and, at the time of which we are speaking, no provision in the
way of marriage or profession had been made for any of them. Of the
one son, Phineas, the hero of the following pages, the mother and
five sisters were very proud. The doctor was accustomed to say that
his goose was as good as any other man's goose, as far as he could
see as yet; but that he should like some very strong evidence
before he allowed himself to express an opinion that the young bird
partook, in any degree, of the qualities of a swan. From which it
may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of common-sense.
Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother
and sisters by reason of certain early successes at college.
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