“This is all very true, Mrs. M’Curdy; I taught school myself, and besides that I laboured in a garden for two years for my food and lodging. With the profits of my school I bought books, and got myself instructed in book-keeping and French; I had besides, two hundred dollars in hand, to pay my board when I went as merchant’s clerk. In five years I was sent out as supercargo, and from that hour I began to make money. But I think you would not complain if these ladies were to raise a fund for the education of females, not to preach, but to teach.”
“Yes, indeed, that is what I have often thought would be more creditable to them, and there is not a poor body who would not join in it. I have often thought how happy I should be, if at my death, I could leave Norah at the head of a good school; instead of knowing, as I do, that she must be put out to service, nay, bound out, as a common kitchen girl, if I should die before she grows up.”
“You need not fear that, my good friend, I shall take care of that; but let us leave that subject for the present. I have heard your grievances, and you do not complain without cause. As to the women working for missionaries, unless it be for missionaries who go out to teach reading and writing, and the English or French language, I think they will soon feel a little ashamed of it; and men will be ashamed to be under such an obligation to women. We will try and get up societies among the young men, and then women will direct their charities to their own sex.”
“I wish they would do this, but I am afraid it will be a long time before men will give their time and money to such purposes. Why, I hear they buy things at the ladies’ fairs very reluctantly, and there are very few who give money to their societies willingly. I know that the two young men I wash for, Mr. Green and Mr. Wilber, often make fun of these ladies, and say they only do it to show themselves, and to be talked about. Men are very ill-natured in these matters. For my part, I think that ladies should teach at Sunday schools, if they are so benevolently disposed, and in Infant schools, and in Dorcas societies; which Dorcas societies should be for the relief of poor, sick women, but men should give the funds, and poor women should do the work and be paid for it. This I think is the proper way; as it is, these societies create a great deal of distress, by sewing themselves. And as to Sunday schools, the excellent persons who first set them going, did not intend them for the children of rich parents. I am not the one however, to put this matter in its proper light; the evil of the thing will soon be seen, and then there will be a cure. But I am talking quite astray; you wanted to hear about my neighbours, and I have gone off to other matters.”
“I am glad of it, if I have the means of doing your poor neighbours a little good, I should know where the grievance lies; this will enable me to apply a remedy. I shall bear it in mind; at present we will speak of the poor people immediately around you. You are on the edge of the common, who is your next neighbour? It is Jemmy Brady, is it not?”
“Yes, poor Jemmy lives there, and a better tempered fellow never lived; but ill luck pursues him in every thing he does, and I cannot think that any thing can improve his condition. He has lived in that poor shanty these seven years, and has never yet been able to put a floor to it, let alone a chimney. To be sure, they have a stove in winter, and in summer they set their pot over stones, yet it is a poor way of living. The two eldest boys that you saw fighting this morning, did work a little in the paper mill, but the confinement made them sick, at least one of them became sick, and the other had to come home to help his mother nurse him, for her other children were too young to bring her a pail of water even.”
“Do you ever go into their cabin?”
“Do I? yes, sure. I go in every now and then, particularly when she’s confined. If her neighbours did not go in to make her a little gruel, and look after the children, they must perish; and the Catholic women, we are all Catholics here, sir, are very good to one another. ‘Tis the poor man alone that hears the poor man,’ you know, sir; but I am thankful that Biddy Brady is the worst off; that is, I am thankful that there are no more so very badly off; if there were, I do not know what we should do.”
“Does not Jemmy like to work? he is a strong, healthy looking man.”
“Why, he likes to work, and he does not like to work; he was bred up to do just nothing at all; but he can write a good hand, and is a good weaver enough, but no one wants a clerk looking so ragged and dirty as Jemmy; and no one weaves now in a small way. If he had a loom by himself he could earn a little; that is, if he could have other employment with it; for Jemmy, unlike Irishmen in general, cannot bear to keep all day at one thing.”