Knowing the character of the people so well, and longing to make the relief of their bodily wants subservient to a higher purpose, I resolved to visit in person every case recommended to my notice. Many of my friends stood aghast at the proposal: I should be insulted, murdered, by the Irish savages; no lady could venture there, their language was so dreadful: no delicate person could survive the effects of such a noxious atmosphere. To this I replied that, happily, I could not hear their conversation; and as for the unwholesomeness, it could not be worse than Sierra Leone, or other missionary stations, where many ladies went. Insult had never yet been my lot among the Irish; and as to murder, it would be martyrdom in such a cause, of which I had little hope. So I turned my fifty pounds into bread, rice, milk, meal, coals, and soup, resolved to give no money, and on the very next day commenced the campaign against starvation and Popery in St. Giles's.
For four months I persevered in the work, devoting from four to six hours every day to it; and though I never in the smallest degree concealed or compromised the truth, or failed to place in the strongest light its contrast with the falsehoods taught them, I never experienced a disrespectful or unkind look from one among the hundreds, the thousands who knew me as the enemy of their religion, but the loving friend of their country and of their souls. Often, when I went to visit and relieve some poor dying creature in a cellar or garret, where a dozen wholly unconnected with the sufferer were lodged in the same apartment, have I gathered them all about me by speaking of Ireland with the affection I really feel for it, and then shown them, from the Scriptures, in English, or by means of an Irish reader sometimes accompanying me, the only way of salvation, pointing out how very different was that by which they vainly sought it. My plan was to discover such as were too ill to go to the dispensary for relief, or to select the most distressed objects whom I met there, and to take the bread of life along with the bread that perisheth into their wretched abodes. I was most ably and zealously helped by that benevolent physician who had always been foremost in every good and compassionate work for the Irish poor; and to whose indefatigable zeal it is chiefly owing that at this day the poor lambs of that distressed flock are still gathered and taught in the schools which it was Donald's supreme delight to superintend. I cannot pass over in silence the devotion of Dr. Pidduck, through many years, to an office the most laborious, the most repulsive, and in many respects the most thankless that a professional man can be engaged in--that of ministering to the diseased and filthy population of the district. But many a soul that he has taught in the knowledge of Him whom to know is life eternal, will be found to rejoice him in the day when their poor bodies shall arise to meet the Lord.