The Cross and the Shamrock Part 4

"Shet up, ye little fools!" said the official; "this is a better place nor ye think. Ye ain't going to get no potatoes, nohow, but something better than ye ever were used to. Take these young 'uns to the stove in the kitchen," said he to an under official. And the sobs and groans of the dest.i.tute orphans were drowned in the uproarious rumbling of the gong that called the officers of the establishment to dinner, it being now noon.

The repugnance of the Irishman to the poorhouse is proverbial. Neither prison, dungeon, nor death is invested with greater horror, in the minds of the peasantry of Ireland, than this inst.i.tution. Solely founded, as they are told, for their special use and benefit, there are instances, countless, on record, where the affectionate mother has thanked Heaven, when by fever, plague, or hunger it deprived her of her darling infant, rather than that it should become an inmate of the poorhouse!

"Is not this prejudice unreasonable and strange?" it will be asked. "And why is it that the Irishman shuns and abhors an inst.i.tution which his English neighbor enjoys and pet.i.tions to enter?" The reasons are numerous, and the difference in the feelings of both obvious and palpable. It must be first remarked, that the Irish are a traditional people, and remarkably conservative of the customs and usages of their ancestors. They look back into the history of their country, or consult their fathers and grandfathers, and in vain look back for the existence of a poorhouse, or any necessity for its existence, before the advent of the "G.o.dly reformation" and the established church in their midst. They heard of such establishments as the ancient "_beataghs_," or houses of hospitality, which were provided for the stranger and dest.i.tute in every townland, the doors of which were open day and night, and on the boards of which cooked victuals for scores of men were continually ready. These were the subst.i.tute for the poorhouse in the days when England and all Europe sent their poor scholars to receive a gratuitous education among the inhabitants of the Island of Saints. There the poor and the hungry could come in and eat, and be filled, and go his way, without being questioned who he was, without being asked for a _pauper ticket_ to admit him, without being obliged or compelled to lead a life of celibacy, or running the risk of his soul's salvation, to keep his body from peris.h.i.+ng of hunger.

In a word, when Brian Boru expelled the Danes from Ireland, when Hugh O'Niel triumphed over the troops of Elizabeth, as well as when Dathi held the sceptre, or Nial of the hostages planted his colors on the Alps, there was enough to feed the poor of Ireland. There was no necessity for a poorhouse; and there is no need of it now, says the Irish peasant, if justice was done to Ireland. "Give us back our monasteries and abbeys, and we will bestow you the poorhouses."

Besides these considerations, the English poorhouse has this advantage over the Irish one--that the former is conducted and presided over by Englishmen, who have a sympathy for, or at least are of, the same blood, religion, and race with its inmates. But in Ireland the case is different. The poorhouses, prison-like edifices, in Elizabethan style of architecture, presided over by Englishmen, generally, and nominees of the crown, are a monument of conquest and tyranny.

The inmates being princ.i.p.ally "mere Irish," and the cost of their support derived chiefly from the land, the landlords consider their health, comfort, or life of only secondary importance. Hence we find the number of deaths in these charnel houses averaging that of years of plague; and each pauper is allowed far less weekly for his support than the lord of the soil allows the meanest dog in his kennel. Add to these the separation of man and wife, the isolation of members of the same family, the dangers of perversion and proselytism to the thinning ranks of the "law church;" and then, if you can, blame the poor Irishman for his horror of the dreadful poorhouse of England. He saw hundreds of his neighbors enter the gates of the poorhouse, but he never saw one return back. Less active imaginations than that of the Irish peasant would be worked on so as to conclude that some means more _active_ than sickness or old age were had recourse to, for the purpose of lessening the taxes on land, by getting rid of the poor.

In truth, the British poorhouse is a great government establishment, where the sons of the low squirearchy are provided for--a terrible mill, where the bodies and souls of Irishmen and women are ground up and annihilated--a labor-saving machine of political economy, introduced into the world by the robbers of the reformation, in order to get rid of surplus population, and in order that the Lazaruses of society might not disturb the false repose of their hypocrisy, by begging the crums that fall from their plunder-burdened tables!

The American poorhouse, however, is of quite a different description, and the prompt.i.tude and unanimity of the public mind regarding the necessity of a law to provide for the support of the poor are among the most laudable traits in the American character. In America, the patrimony of the poor was never wrested from the church, to which G.o.d committed their care; the charities and bequests of ages were not plundered and squandered by the vilest of the human race, as in Britain; hospitals, churches, abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other endowed provisions for the poor, were not robbed and confiscated by the sectarians of the new world, (probably because they did not exist there;) and hence the essential difference between the English and American poorhouse. There is no part of the Scripture the reformation people so rigidly adhered to, or now pretend to adhere to, as the advice of Judas, "Let this be sold and given to the poor." They made the sale, but the poor they left unprovided for, till their numbers increased so as to threaten the ill-gotten goods of the plunderers, who at length pa.s.sed laws compelling the poor to support the poor. And this was the origin of poorhouses--a true Protestant creation.

CHAPTER V.

THE O'CLERYS.

The O'Clery family was an ancient and honored one in Ireland. Princes, chieftains, and warriors of the name were renowned before Charlemagne or Alfred ascended the throne, or before any of the petty princes of the heptarchy ruled over the barbarous Saxons. Like all the royal and n.o.ble houses of Europe, the O'Clerys, after ages of glory and prosperity, had their hour of decline and decay also. But it was a question whether the virtues of this renowned house were more brilliant or conspicuous in the zenith of its glory, or in its fallen or humbled state. The Irish church founded by Saint Patrick never wanted an O'Clery to adorn her sanctuary or to record her victories. The annals of the Four Masters will stand to the end of the world as a proud monument of the services rendered to the Irish church and to history by these ill.u.s.trious annalists; and when the deeds of the most renowned knights and chieftains of this royal house shall have been obliterated by the merciless chisel of time, the authors of the Four Masters' Annals will become only brighter among the s.h.i.+ning stars that adorn the literary firmament of old Ireland.

The martyrology of the Irish church can attest the virtues of constancy and patriotism with which the O'Clerys bore their share of the wrongs of Erin and of her faithful sons. Whether or not the subjects of our narrative, the poor emigrant orphans, had any of this royal and n.o.ble blood flowing in their veins, is a thing that we cannot genealogically vouch. But that they were not degenerate sons of Erin, or faithless to their allegiance to the glorious old church of their fathers, we trust this history will amply demonstrate. At all events, the uncle of our hero, Paul O'Clery, held a very high station in the Irish hierarchy.

Having, with eclat, finished his ecclesiastical and literary primary studies in the colleges of his native land, he subsequently repaired to Rome, where he won with distinction the t.i.tle of "doctor in divinity and canon law," and carried the first premium from many French, German, and even Italian compet.i.tors. Hence, soon after his return from abroad, on account of his learning, as well as his tried virtues, he was appointed the vicar general of the diocese of Kil----, a promotion which, far from exciting the envy, gained the unanimous approval, of the diocesan clergy. During the horrors of the general landlord persecution of the Irish Catholics, (for it is nothing else than a persecution of Catholics,) the O'Clerys found their name on the roll of the proscribed, and got notice to quit the homestead of their fathers. The princ.i.p.al cause for this proscription by the landlord was, that Dr. O'Clery, in the newspapers, exposed the system of cruel and barbarous extermination which took place on the extensive estates of Lord Mandemon--a gentleman who said he thought it far more honorable, as well as profitable, to have his princely estates in Munster tenanted by fat cattle than by Irish Papists. His lords.h.i.+p had also the mortification to learn that all the meat, money, and clothing he had employed for the last five years could not make one single sincere convert to his rich "law establishment." When the "praties" were dear, and the crops failed, there were a few, to be sure, who would profess themselves ready to "ate the mate" on Friday; but as soon as plenty returned, the "new lights"

went out, or returned to ask pardon of G.o.d, the priest, and the people; and Lord Mandemon and his soup were pitched to the "seventy-nine devils." This failure, this result, so often before seen and felt, and so certain to follow, was, in his zeal for proselytism, attributed by his lords.h.i.+p to Dr. O'Clery's zeal and learning. For, whenever or wherever he went among the peasantry to preach to them in their own sweet and loved dialect, the "jumpers, the new lights, and the soupers"

disappeared like the locusts from Egypt when exorcised by the magic rod of Moses. Hence the hatred with which the O'Clerys were persecuted.

Hence, also, the oath of Lord Mandemon, that he would never return to his home in England till every Papist on his estates was rooted out.

This oath was kept by his lords.h.i.+p, probably the only true one he ever swore; for in less than a fortnight he fell a victim to the cholera, and expired on board the Princess Royal steamboat on her return to Liverpool.

Arthur O'Clery, father to the subject of our tale, sold out a second farm he held near Limerick, turned all his effects into money, bade adieu to his beloved brother, Dr. O'Clery, who was averse to his emigration, and, in the autumn, set sail from Liverpool for New York, in the s.h.i.+p Hottinguer. He had all his family with him: they were comfortably provided with all necessaries, and, besides, had one thousand pounds, in hard cash, to start with in the new world. They were not long out at sea, when, owing to the crowd on board, the lack of proper arrangements, and room, or ventillation, as well as on account of the cruelly of the inhuman captain, s.h.i.+p fever and cholera broke out on board.

The number of bodies consigned to the ocean from that unlucky vessel was from five to ten daily, and among the victims of the plague was Arthur O'Clery. He was the only one of the cabin pa.s.sengers who was attacked by the epidemic, which, in the ardor of his charity, he contracted while attending on, and ministering to, the wants of the poor steerage pa.s.sengers.

Sad and impressive was the scene when the Rev. H. O'Q----, a young Irish priest on board, in the middle hold of the s.h.i.+p, where O'Clery had been removed by order of the captain, called on the six hundred surviving pa.s.sengers to kneel while he was administering the rites of the church to the benefactor of them all. Never was a call on the piety and faith of any number of men more cheerfully obeyed. Instantaneously that mixed, nondescript crowd--Irish, English, Scotch, Welsh, Dutch--Catholic, Protestant, infidel--fell on their knees, and, if they did not pray, they paid that _outward homage_ to Religion which sometimes the most indifferent and irreligious cannot resist paying her. Infidelity is a great coward, as well as a false guide. In her hour of ease and satiety, she pretends to scorn the threats and judgments of the Most High, and, like Satan in his pandemonium, to make war on Heaven; but no sooner does the roaring of the thunderbolt shake the earth, or the vast abyss open its devouring throat to swallow her unhappy victims, than she hides her head in the caves of the earth, or, flying to some secure place, abandons her votaries to the forlorn hope of trusting to the weakness of their own minds for resources to extricate themselves from the evils that threaten them. It was so on board the ill-fated Hottinguer. Those who, under the influence of the security offered by the prosperous sailing of the few first days, were bold, independent, and defiant of danger, no sooner did they see their comrades thrown overboard, after a few hours' sickness, than their hearts failed within them, their tone of defiance was turned into despair, their mockery of religion ceased, and that priest of G.o.d, whom they ridiculed, insulted, and despised for the first few days, was now respected, confided in, and regarded by them with sentiments bordering on religious homage.

Fervently did that priest, who thanked G.o.d that he was on hand, pray, not that G.o.d would restore him to his wife and children,--for all hope of recovery was now gone,--but that, in accordance with the anxious desire of the dying man, he should have the privilege of burial in a Christian, consecrated tomb.

"Pray, father," said he, "that, if it be G.o.d's holy will, I may be buried in a consecrated soil. It seems to me a sort of profanation, that the cruel fishes and those monsters of the deep, which we see leaping around the vessel, should devour my flesh, united with, and I hope sanctified now by, the flesh and blood of my Lord."

The priest did pray, and the people joined in that impulsive prayer of faith, and that prayer was heard; for, though O'Clery breathed his last on board, and, by the captain's orders, the sailors--poor fellows!--were standing around his berth, prepared, as soon as the last breath left him, to throw him overboard, yet he lingered for three days after; and they reached quarantine before that pure soul quitted its tenement of clay and winged its flight to heaven. The wife and her children had the body conveyed to sh.o.r.e and interred in the Catholic cemetery of New York, where a neat marble monument could be seen with these words inscribed:--

_"Pray for the soul of Arthur O'Clery, whose body lies underneath.

Requiescat in pace. Amen."_

It was thus that the O'Clerys were deprived of their good and virtuous father, and the widow of her husband; but this, as already has been partly seen, was but the beginning of their woes; for, after their arrival in New York, an individual, who, during the voyage, ingratiated himself with the family by his attention around the sick man's bed, joined them at their lodgings. But in a few days they found him gone one morning, after their return from ma.s.s at Barclay Street Church, and with him the canvas bag, containing the thousand pounds in gold and Bank of England notes left by them in a trunk. Thus were six persons, strangers and dest.i.tute in a great city, reduced from competency to poverty at "one fell swoop" by the villany of a pretended friend and a.s.sociate.

"O Lord, pity me! One misfortune never comes alone," groaned the now poor and afflicted widow O'Clery, when she was informed by little Bridget that the "trunk was broke open," and all the things ransacked "through and fro."

She soon saw that all she had was gone, and concluded that Cunningham, as he was absent from breakfast contrary to his wont, must be the thief.

The police got immediate notice; advertis.e.m.e.nts were issued, and rewards offered, and in a day or two after Cunningham was arrested; but as none of the money was found on his person, and as there was no direct evidence of his guilt, the magistrate discharged him. The articles of dress in her well-supplied wardrobe were detained, in payment of her board bill, by the hotel keeper where she lodged in New York; and with the few s.h.i.+llings that remained in her purse, she, with her children, took pa.s.sage on one of the Hudson River boats, hoping to make out certain acquaintances of her husband, whom she heard were settled in the vicinity of T----. The rest has been already told--namely, how she took sick and died after great sufferings; how her children were left dest.i.tute, and next to naked; how they were now reduced to the rank of paupers, and secured within the precincts of the county house.

"Of all the things which we brought from home with us, we have nothing of value now left, Bridget," said Paul, "but this silver crucifix, which belonged to my grandfather. Glory be to G.o.d. Let us be glad that this has been left," said he, kissing it with religious affection. "This is all we have now left. Let us defend it."

CHAPTER VI.

THE COUNCIL.

Father O'Shane was now several days weather bound and laid up sick in Vermont, where, with great anxiety, he waited the first opportunity to return home to his mission; and the orphans were safely lodged in the poorhouse, where our friend Paul, to calm the anxiety and dispel the grief of his younger companions, began to contrast, with an air of satisfaction, the aspect of things here with what he had heard of the horrors of the Irish poorhouse.

"What nice men we have in America over the poorhouse," said he; "they are very kind to us."

"Yes; but I don't like that man with the great beard," said Bridget; "he frightens me when I meet him. O, such a _feesage_; a robin redbreast could make her nest in it," said she, smiling.

"He might be a nice man for all that, Bid. Most people here don't shave at all, you know, as we saw in New York. And did you notice that sailor that saved the boy who fell overboard, what a long beard he had? And he must be a brave, good man, to risk his own life to save another's."

"Yes, Paul; but he was a Catholic, and from Ireland, too; for he made the sign of the cross on himself in Irish before he leaped out, for I was near him; and besides, I saw him going to confession to the same priest we went to the day after we landed."

"And are not they all Catholics here, Paul?" said Patsy. "I seen crosses on three churches, the time I went with Mrs. Doherty for the priest for mother, G.o.d be good to her."

"No, Patsy, they are not; for if they were, there would be more than one priest for this large town; and you heard Father O'Shane say that there was only himself for all the city and a great part of the country," said Paul.

"I hope somebody will take us to ma.s.s on Sunday," said little Patrick; "and, Paul, will you ask the priest to allow me to answer ma.s.s? You know Father Doyle told us never to forget the lessons we learned of him."

"I'd know are there any nuns here," said Bridget. "O, how beautiful the convent chapel in Limerick was! I hope I have not lost my beautiful little silver medals and crucifix they gave me when I was coming away.

No; here they are, and my Agnus Dei, too," she said, kissing them. "G.o.d rest mother's soul, how glad she was when I got these from the holy nuns!" And the tears streamed down her fair cheeks in floods.

"Hold your tongue, Bridget, again," said Paul, with emphasis. "Don't you know that mother told us not to grieve, but pray for her soul? And besides, in the 'Imitation of Christ,' which I read for you this morning and last night, it is said that grief kills devotion, and excessive, sorrow is a sin. You can serve mother, or rejoice her soul, by praying, but not by crying, Bridget."

"O, how can I help it? 'Tis against me will, Paul," said she, wiping her eyes.

"Always look attentively at that crucifix," said Paul, "and you need never grieve for any thing except sin. This is what Father Doyle used to say."

"O Paul, we have no father or mother now."

"Yes we have, Bridget--our Father in heaven, and the blessed virgin mother of G.o.d, our mother also," said the young preacher.

"How well the priest did not call as he said he would."

"May be he could not help it; he had to go far into the country, and the snow might stop him. You know he will find us out. The priest always visits the poorhouse in Ireland."

While this conversation was going on between the members of this poor orphan family, Paul acting the meritorious part of a comforter, (I say acting, for his own n.o.ble soul was almost crushed with grief, which he thought it better to disguise than to have his little charge rendered quite stupid and almost dead from crying and sobbing;) while this was the way Paul entertained his little charge, in another part of the poorhouse, in a well-furnished room, were seated around a table containing the "_reliquiae"_ or remnants of a good dinner, five persons, engaged in earnest chat about the late importation of orphans.