Of the amount “saved” by the patience of the poor Irishmen, I can form no conjecture.
OF THE HISTORY OF SOME IRISH STREET-SELLERS.
In order that the following statements might be as truthful as possible, I obtained permission to use the name of a Roman Catholic clergyman, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information touching this part of my subject.
A young woman, of whose age it was not easy to form a conjecture, her features were so embrowned by exposure to the weather, and perhaps when I saw her a little swollen from cold, gave me the following account as to her living. Her tone and manner betrayed indifference to the future, caused perhaps by ignorance,--for uneducated persons I find are apt to look on the future as if it must needs be but a repetition of the present, while the past in many instances is little more than a blank to them. This young woman said, her brogue being little perceptible, though she spoke thickly:
“I live by keepin’ this fruit stall. It’s a poor livin’ when I see how others live. Yes, in thruth, sir, but it’s thankful I am for to be able to live at all, at all; troth is it, in these sore times. My father and mother are both did. God be gracious to their sowls! They was evicted. The family of us was. The thatch of the bit o’ home was tuk off above our hids, and we were lift to the wide worruld--yis, indeed, sir, and in the open air too. The rint wasn’t paid and it couldn’t be paid, and so we had to face the wither. It was a sorrowful time. But God was good, and so was the neighbours. And when we saw the praste, he was a frind to us. And we came to this counthry, though I’d always heard it called a black counthry. Sure, an’ there’s much in it to indhure. There’s goin’s on it, sir, that the praste, God rewarrud him! wouldn’t like to see. There’s bad ways. I won’t talk about thim, and I’m sure you are too much of a gintlemin to ask me; for if you know Father ----, that shows you are the best of gintlemin, sure. It was the eviction that brought us here. I don’t know about where we was just; not in what county; nor parish. I was so young whin we lift the land. I belave I’m now 19, perhaps only 18” (she certainly looked much older, but I have often noticed that of her class). “I can’t be more, I think, for sure an’ its only 5 or 6 years since we left Watherford and come to Bristol. I’m sure it was Watherford, and a beautiful place it is, and I know it was Bristol we come to. We walked all the long way to London. My parints died of the cholera, and I live with mysilf, but my aunt lodges me and sees to me. She sills in the sthreets too. I don’t make 7_d._ a day. I may make 6_d._ There’s a good many young payple I know is now sillin’ in the streets becase they was evicted in their own counthry. I suppose they had no where ilse to come to. I’m nivir out of a night. I sleep with my aunt, and we keep to oursilves sure. I very sildom taste mate, but perhaps I do oftener than before we was evicted--glory be to God.”