AN IRISH CATHOLIC
Godliness is great riches if a man be content with that which he hath.
"God bless all the kind ratepayers for my good dinner and a good cup o' tay to wash it down with, and a nice bit of fire this cold day. You paupers never give thanks unto the Lord, a nasty Protestant lot without a ha'porth of manners between you, a-cursing and swearing, and blaspheming; they have not the grace of God. Say 'Good afternoon' to the lady, Betsy Brown, and don't be so rude; they never do have a word of thanks to the kind ladies and gentlemen who come a-visiting them, and we don't get many visitors just now; all the dear ladies are away a-paddling in the ocean. The gentleman Guardians come sometimes, but they are not so chatty as the ladies, don't seem to know what to say to us old women. You don't happen to have a bit of snuff about you, my lady?—excuse me asking you, but some of the ladies carries a bit for me. I ain't allowed my pipe in here, and I misses it cruel; at first I had gripes a-seizing my vitals through missing the comfort of a bit of 'baccy, and the doctor he seemed much gratified with the symtims of my sufferings, and says I was attacked by the pensis, I think he termed it, the royal disease of the King, and he was all for cutting me up at once. But I up and says, 'Young man, don't talk to your elders. It's nothing but my poor hinnards a-craving for a pipe and a drop o' Irish, and you'll kindly keep your knives and hatchets off me. The King can be cut up if he likes, but I'll go before my Judge on the Resurrection morning with my poor old body undisfigured by gaping holes and wounds!' Yes, I frets cruel in the work'us, lady. If I could only get away back to Kensington, where I belong, I'd be all right. I have no friends here—only you and the Almighty God. I'm a poor old blind Irishwoman, lady; and my sons is out in Ameriky and seems to have forgotten the mother that bore them, and my husband's been dead these forty years, and he was not exakly one to thank God for on bare knees—God rest his poor black sowl! Yes, I've been blind now these thirty years (I was ninety on the Feast of the Blessed Lady of Mount Carmel), and one day in the winter we'd just been saying Mass for the sowl of the Cardinal Newman, and when I got back home I put up a bit of gunpowder to clane the chimbly, which smoked cruel (I always was a decent, clane body) and the wicked stuff turned round on me very vindictious, and blew down into the room, burning red-hot into my poor, innocent eyes. They cut one out at St. Bartholomew's 'Orspital, and they hoped to save the other, but it took to weeping itself away voluntarious, and a-throbbing like steam-engines, and the young chaps fetched it out a few weeks later. But I'm a very happy blind woman. Yes, lady, it was dreadful at first, and I'll not deny that the cross seemed too heavy for my poor back—as if God Himself had forsaken me—great, black, thundering darkness all round as I couldn't cut a peep-show in nohow. All night I'd be a raging and a-fighting to get one little ray of light, and then I'd howl and shriek to the Blessed Virgin and all the saints, and then I'd curse and blaspheme and call to all the devils in hell; but no one heard, and the darkness continued dark. But, glory be to the saints! it's astonishing how used you get to things. At the end of a couple of months you seems to forget as there was ever anything else but darkness around, and by the grace of God and the favour of the angels I gets about most nimblous. No, I don't belong to this parish at all; that's why I hopes one day to get sixpence and get back to Kensington. But, you see, lady, it was like this—I came up to call on my poor sister at the top of the hill, and when I got there they told me she was dead and buried (God rest her sowl!), and the shock was so great I fell down overcome, as you may say, by emotion, and a kind gentleman picked me up and brought me in here, and there I lay stretched out on a bed of pain with a great bruise all down my poor side, and my poor hinnards a-struggling amongst theirselves for a bit of comfort, which they've never got since I've been here, and the young chap of a doctor a-talking in long and indecent words to the nusses. (I hear you inmates a-smiling again!) But I was not in liquor lady—s'help me it's God's truth! (May your lips stiffen for ever, sitting there a-grinning and a-mocking at God's truth!) I've allus been a sober woman, and I've always conducted myself. (God blast you all, and your children and children's children!) Yes, my lady, I know it's not a prison and I can take my discharge; but, you see, I don't know the way to the 'bus as'll take me to Kensington, and I ain't got sixpence—a most distressful and unpleasant circumstance not to have sixpence. May the Holy Mother preserve you in wealth and prosperity so that you may never know! If I had sixpence of my own do you think I'd stay in this wicked Bastille, ordered about by the ladies of the bar? I calls them ladies of the bar, not as they ever give you a drop to cheer you, but because as they is puffed up with vanity and three-ha'porth of starched linen. Yes, my lady, I know as they calls theirselves nusses, but when you're ninety you won't like to be ordered about by a parcel of girls. Oh, my lady, if you would only put me in the 'bus that goes to Kensington and give me a sixpence here in my poor old hand, then may the Blessed Mother keep you for ever, you and your good children, and may the crown of glory that is waiting for you before the Great White Throne be studded with di'monds and rubies brighter than the stars! How could I get on? I'd be all right if I only got to Kensington; there's the praists!—God love 'em!—they knows me and helps me, and kind ladies who give me the tickets for meat and groceries; and there's the landlord of the 'Fish and Quart'—he'll be near you, lady, before the Great White Throne—and on wet days, when the quality don't come out, I go round to him and there's always a bite and a sup for old Bridget. I hear you paupers smiling again, but believe me, lady, it is the black wickedness of their iniquitous hearts. Ask the perlice, lady—God bless the bhoys for leading the old pauper over many a tumultuous street!—they will tell you my excellent character for temperance and sobriety and cleanliness. They give me a paper from Scotland Yard, which lets me walk in the High Street. I sells nothing and I asks nothing, but I just stands, and the ladies and gentlemen rains pennies in my hand thick as hail in May-time. And do I get enough to live on? I should think I did, and enough to fill the belly of another woman who clanes my room and cooks my food and leads me about. No, I shan't get run over by no motor-car. The Lord may have taken the sight of my eyes, but He has left me an uncommon sharp pair of ears and a nose like a ferret, and by this special mercy I can hear the things stinking and rampaging long afore they're near me. You needn't be afeard for me, lady—old Bridget can take care of herself, being always a sober and temperate woman. Any one who tells you different in this wicked Bastille is a liar and a slanderer, a child of the Devil and Satan, who shall have their portion in hell-fire. Matron says I've no clothes, does she?—and after the beautiful dress as I came up to see my poor sister with? Yes, I know as I must have a decent gown on in a fashionable neighbourhood. I like to be in the fashion, even if I am blind; but you'll find me an old one of yours, lady, and I shall look so beautiful in it the bhoys will be all for eloping with me as I stand.
"Most peculiar joyful feeling there is about a sixpence if you've not felt one these fower months. The other night I'd been worriting my poor old head shocking all day how to get sixpence in this den of paupers, and when I fell asleep I had a vision of our Blessed Lady a-smiling most gracious like and a-stretching out a silver sixpence bright as the glory round her most blessed head. I cried cruel when I woke, sixpence seemed so far off; but now, thanks be to God and to all His howly angels, my dream is true!"
AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,