“It’s wonderful, sure,” Mr Maguire said, when Michael had finished, “but I’m not wishful for to change. Sure, old Ireland is good enough for me, and I’d not be missing the larks singing in the spring in the green fields of Erin, and the smell of the peat on the hearth in winter. It’s queer and lonesome I’d be without these things, and that’s the truth.”
He threw his head back and began to sing. Everybody joined in and sang, too. This is the song they sang:—
“Old Ireland you’re my jewel sure,
My heart’s delight and glory,
Till Time shall pass his empty glass
Your name shall live in story.
“And this shall be the song for me,
The first my heart was learning,
When first my tongue its accents flung,
Old Ireland, you’re my darling!
“From Dublin Bay to Cork’s Sweet Cove,
Old Ireland, you’re my darling
My darling, my darling,
From Dublin Bay to Cork’s Sweet Cove;
Old Ireland, you’re my darling.”
Chapter Fifteen.
Mr McQueen makes up his Mind.
Michael sang with the others. And when the song was ended, he said, “’Tis a true word, Mr Maguire, that there’s no place like old Ireland; and you’ll not find an Irishman anywhere in America that wouldn’t put the man down that said a word against her. But what with the landlords taking every shilling you can scrape together and charging you higher rent whenever you make a bit of an improvement on your farm, there’s no chance at all to get on in the world. And with the children, God bless them, coming along by sixes and dozens, and little for them to do at home, and no place to put them when they grow up, sure, it’s well to go where they’ve a better chance.
“Look at the schools now! If you could see the school that my Patrick goes to, you’d never rest at all until your children had the same! Sure, the schoolhouses are like palaces over there, and as for learning, the children pick it up as a hen does corn!”