As I did not expect to visit it again I made up my mind to do my giving on leaving the place, but my hundred pound notes are all in the future, and therefore no one can ever tell a similar tale of me.
I must confess that, being a Protestant, I felt a little compunction about going to the place, but I had been assured that my sect would make no difference, that the fathers were glad to receive all who came, and that I would be as well treated as though I were a saint.
On my way up my jarvey told me of the amount of good that the monks do, not only in a spiritual, but in a material way, by providing work for the able-bodied men of the vicinity.
We passed a neat stone cottage with ivy growing on it, and a vigorous fuchsia tree blooming in the garden, and he told me that it was a government cottage and rented for the absurd sum of a shilling a week.
"And how much can a man earn in the fields?" said I.
"A matter of ten shillings a week," was his reply.
Query: If a man gets ten dollars a week in New York and lives in a crowded Harlem flat for which he pays at least five dollars a week, is he as well off as this Irishman, in his native land, with all the fresh air in the world, fowls and fresh eggs, and butter of his wife's making, and one of the loveliest views imaginable before him?
But you'll find the man in the neat little government cottage anxious to fly to the land of dollars—and when he's there he'll hand out more dollars to his landlord for inadequate accommodations than he could earn at home in a month of Sundays.
Human nature is human nature, and the daisies in the field over the pond are always more beautiful than the ones that lie at your feet.