Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/242

"The good Quakers," said a nun, "have kept them alive; and the clothes you see on them are sent through that channel, all but the caps, which we provide." These children were taken from filth and poverty, never knowing the use of the needle, or value of a stocking, and now could produce the finest specimens of knitting, both ornamental and useful. And looking upon these happy faces one might feel that Ireland is not wholly lost. My next visit was in the workhouse at the old town of Galway. The distress here had been dreadful, and most of them seemed waiting in silent despair for the last finishing stroke of their misery. One cleanly-clad fisherman of whom I made inquiries, invited me to visit the fishermen's cottages, which before the famine were kept tidy, and had the "comfortable bit" at all times; "now, the fisheries are lost, we are too poor to keep up the tackle, and are all starving." I followed him to a row of neat cottages, where the discouraged housekeepers appeared as if they had swept their cottage floors, put on the last piece of turf, and had actually sat down to die. "Here we are," said one, (as she rose from her stool to salute us,) "sitting in these naked walls, without a mouthful of bread, and don't know what the good God will do for us." This fisherman then showed me into the monks' school-rooms, who were teaching and feeding a number of boys, and showed me some new fishing nets which the kind Quakers had sent, and he hoped, if they did not all die, that the "net might sairve 'em."