There is not a part of the country to which I have wandered, where I did not find that a like gentle recollection of the destitute left at home prevailed. In every large city is some one or more Irish house, which becomes the popular medium through which these offerings of the heart are transmitted to the miserables at home. When it is reflected that the donors are themselves the poorest of the poor, and that often at the close of their first summer, they are found transmitting their earnings to some mother, or aunt, or sister, without providing against or thinking of the severity of approaching winter, no eulogy can be too strong.
"Well, but look, David," remonstrated my kind friend H---- in New Orleans, to a poor fellow who, after three months' hard labour, brought him forty-five dollars to send home, "let me recommend you to keep back ten dollars of this to buy yourself a warm coat; we have a cold month coming, man, and you are ill off for covering."
"It's true for ye, sir," cried Davy, scratching his head, and glancing down at his ragged garments, "bud it's only for a month you'll be havin' cowld here, and the poor crature at home has a long winter to get over, and her as bare as myself, and less able for id. The clothes cost a heap o' money here, too, I find; and if you plase, sir, in the name o' God, send all I have home, and I'll keep off the cowld, when it comes, by workin' the harder."
Instances are constantly occurring of labourers, landing at a good season, going to work though hardly able from weakness, and at the end of their first week bringing three or four dollars to be sent home.
I will not multiply instances, as I might do, nor need I offer further comment. I confess freely that I have a pride in setting this much-enduring class of my countrymen before the English people, who, generous themselves, know how to appreciate good in others. At these times one page of fact is worth a volume of unsupported eulogium. If the present short statement contributes to promoting a kind feeling towards a little known, although much abused class, it will have accomplished the end contemplated, and in doing this, will have served all parties.
_Friday, 19th._--After passing four days with my New York friends, on this morning, at six A.M. descended from No. 1; and having bade Mr. Willard a final adieu, quitted the City Hotel, where, during many comings and goings, I had always lodged, and where I had constantly experienced the greatest attention.