There was nothing for it but to laugh. But what an insight into the manner in which “other people see us.”
In the Signora’s early teens her family indulged in a Dublin season, during which a very worthy prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of her Church, died. He was full of years and good works, but at no moment of his existence remarkable for good looks.
A sprightly housemaid of the establishment demanded permission to go and visit the church where he was laid out in state. On her return the Padrona’s mother inquired how the sight had impressed her, expecting a duly pious response.
Quoth the damsel, with her brisk Dublin accent:
“Well, really, ’m, I thought the Cawdinal looked remawkably well!”
As a rule, however, the Irish lower classes are more quick to seize shades of feeling, refinements of emotion, than the poor of other races; especially--to hark back to a former page--that peasantry of the older type in which a vivid spirituality was kept alive by their faith. A chaplain has written to us from the Isle of Wight speaking of the immense consolation he had had in the presence of some Irish soldiers among the troops stationed there. “Their faith made me ashamed.”
But indeed the feeling of religion among all our men, of whatever creed, and from whatever part of the British Isles they have come, is not one of the least remarkable manifestations of the war.
“I knew I would not be killed,” said a wounded soldier beside whose bed we sat the other day. “But I knew I’d come back a better man, and I think I have.”
Then he added that the only thing that troubled them, lying in hospital, was the thought of the comrades in the thick of it, and not being able to help them.
“Of course,” he went on thoughtfully, “we can pray. We all do that, of course; we do pray, and we know that helps.”
Infinitely touching are the remarks they make, these dear fellows; beautiful sometimes in their unconscious heroism.
“Well, at least,” said the Signorina to a man permanently crippled by shrapnel, saddened by the decision that he could never go back to the front. “At least you know you’ve done your little bit.”
“Ah, but you see, miss,” he answered in all simplicity, “among us the saying goes, no one has really done his little bit till he’s underground.”