“Was the salmon caught this morning, waiter?”
“It was, sir. Faith, it's not two hours since that fish was walking round his estates, wid his hands in his pockets, never draming what a pretty invitashun he'd have to jine you gintlemen at dinner.”
This was followed by a small saddle of “Arran mutton, y'r onner;” and “what can mortals wish for more,” except a soupçon of cheese?
Ah, but we felt almost ashamed of being so full and comfortable, when our conversational attendant began to talk to us about the Great Famine. “That's right, good gintlemen,” he said, “niver forget, when ye've had yer males, to thank the Lord as sends them. May ye niver know what it is to crave for food, and may ye niver see what I have seen, here in the town o' Galway. I mind the time when I lived yonder” (and he pointed to Kilroy's Hotel), “and the poor craturs come crawling in from the country with their faces swollen, and grane, and yaller, along of the arbs they'd been ating. We gave them bits and scraps, good gintlemen, and did what we could (the Lord be praised!), but they was mostly too far gone out o' life to want more than the priest and pity. I've gone out of a morning, gintlemen,” (his lip quivered as he spoke), “and seen them lying dead in the square, with the green grass in their mouths.” And he turned away, (God bless his kind heart!), to hide the tears, which did him so much honour.
Can history or imagination suggest a scene more awfully impressive than that which Ireland presented in the times of the Great Famine? The sorrows of that visitation have been recorded by eloquent, earnest men; but they come home to us with a new and startling influence, when we hear of them upon Irish ground. Most vividly can we realise the wreck, when he, who hardly swam ashore and escaped, points to the scene of peril; and while the storm-clouds still drift in the far horizon, and the broken timbers float upon the seething wave, describes, with an exactness horrible to himself, that last amazement and despair.
In the beautiful land of the merry-hearted, “all joy was darkened,--the mirth of the land was gone.” In the country of song, and dance, and laughter, there was not heard, wherever that Famine came, one note of music, nor one cheerful sound,--only the gasp of dying men, and the mourners' melancholy wail. The green grass of the Emerald Isle grew over a nation's grave. The crowning plague of Egypt was transcended here, for not only in some districts, was there in every house “one dead,” but there were homes in which there was but one living--homes, in which one little child was found, calling upon father, mother, brothers, and sisters, to wake from their last, long sleep,--homes, from which the last survivor fled away, in wild alarm, from those whom living he had loved so well. Fathers were seen vainly endeavouring (such was their weakness) to dig a grave for their children, reeling and staggering with the useless spade in their hands. The poor widow, who had left her home to beg a coffin for her last, lost child, fell beneath her burden upon the road and died. 1 The mendicant had now no power to beg The drivers of the public cars went into cottages, and found all dead, or Rachel weeping for her children, and praying that die she might. By the seaside, men seeking shell-fish, fell down upon the sands, and, impotent to rise, were drowned. First they began to bury corpses, coffinless, then could not bury them at all.