unpaid. The landlord growls, but growls in vain: the "lazy dogs," who are not in the poor-house, drawing enormous rates from his extensive farms, are at his doors, begging bread, or lying dead under his windows, waiting for "the board to be put on 'em," as they called a coffin. Coffins were now becoming scarce, and in the mountainous regions and islands, two rough boards, with the corpse, in the rags which were about it when the breath departed, placed between these, and a straw rope wound about, was the coveted boon which clung to them to the last.
The winter passed, but the spring brought no fresh hopes; onward was the fearful march—many faces that were ruddy, and limbs that were robust, and hearts that had scarcely had a fear that the wolf would enter their dwelling, now began to fade, stumble, and finally sink under the pursuer. My purse was low, my meal gone, when a letter, the choicest and best, arrived, written by a teacher of a pauper school in New York, and signed by the Corresponding Committee there of the Dublin Friends' Society, transmitting me a few barrels of meal, from the children of that pauper school. This was an offering richer than all, it was the interest of the widow's mite, coming through the channel of the orphans, whose willing hearts and ready hands had gathered from their scanty comforts a few pounds without solicitation, and begged the privilege to send it to me. It came: I had previously been informed that a school in the poorest convent in Dublin was in a state of the greatest suffering. These schools
