Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/153

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FAMINE IN IRELAND
147

her manuscripts in hands who were not to publish them till after her death. On that bleak coast she had found where a company of seventeen shipwrecked sailors had been buried, in a mound, and she had requested to lie near their resting-place. She took me to walk, and showed me the forbidding-looking spot. I could scarcely think her sincere, but she assured me that it was a lovely spot to her. She was then perhaps not yet fifty, and why she should think of soon dying and lying there I could not tell; but the intelligent and accomplished Miss Wilson died in a few months after, in the full hope of a happy immortality, and was buried with the shipwrecked sailors on that rocky coast.

"She sleeps in unenvied repose, and I would not wake her."

Here in a humble cabin the kind Miss Carey commenced a little school, to do what she could to keep alive the scattered lambs of that desolate parish, in order that she might give them, through some relief society, a little food once a day, and teach them to read. Her cabin was soon filled, and without the promise of any reward she labored on, happy to see the avidity with which these poor children received instruction, and for a year she continued her labor of love with but little remuneration, and at last, with much regret, was obliged to return them to their mountain home—perhaps to perish. It was affecting everywhere in the famine, to witness the pale emaciated children, walking barefoot for miles to school, and study and work till three o'clock, for the scanty meal of stirabout, or piece