Chapter III: Part 3

Thus the Rose and the Thistle are vindicated, but the tiny shamrock still droops its green leaf in the atmosphere of public estimation. In judging of Irish character, a very useful distinction drawn in the days of good Queen Bess is overlooked. It divided the nation into “the Irish, the wild Irish, and the extreme wild Irish.” In justice, these distinctions ought to be preserved; for the “Irish” of the present day are, upon the whole, pretty much like other well-bred, well-educated members of the civilised world; eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing, and living much as their neighbours do. But it must be owned that the lower orders,—the “wild Irish” of the towns, and the “extreme wild Irish” of the bogs and mountains,—present some striking and picturesque peculiarities to justify the conventional Irishman of the old novel: the most prominent being that mingled love of fun and fighting, which would make one believe that the atmosphere of the four fair provinces is compounded in equal portions of inflammable and laughing gas.

Very deplorable, indeed, must be the state of an Irishman—he must “be gone to the bad entirely,” when he can neither smile nor quarrel; and often even “under the ribs of death” is “an appetite created” for these excitements. He loves fun; but fighting is his pride and his glory. For fighting he forswears name and wealth. You may call him by all the uncomplimentary names in the vocabulary of censure, and he hears you meekly; but cast an imputation on his courage or his prowess, and—“Hah! Whoo!”—you will feel his shillelagh whizzing around your ears like a fire-work in a state of explosion.

An illustration of this peculiarity, of the ease with which a “wild Irishman” will forego every prudent consideration in preference to the disgrace of having been beaten in battle occurred, but a short while since. In a Union workhouse in the south, some of the able-bodied paupers came into rather forcible collision with the officials. The cause of dispute was the supply of “stirabout,” which being deemed insufficient by a few stout fellows, they marched into the kitchen, seized ladles and bowls, and proceeded to help themselves. An alarm of this lawless incursion being given, in rushed to the rescue the master and his myrmidons. Fast and furious were the blows dealt by both parties, but the strong hand of the law at length prevailed, the well-fed officers triumphed over their famine-weakened foes, and the stalwart master counted his victory by the number of broken heads prostrated by the huge ladle which he wielded. The proprietors of the damaged craniums were subsequently conveyed to the surgeon’s room, and severally bandaged and plastered as their cases required. Most of the hurts were found to be trifling, but one poor fellow had received a severe contusion. With the dislike which many of his countrymen feel, to submit to the prescription of qualified practitioners, Tim Murphy, in a day or two, asked for his discharge, threw off the well-fixed bandages, and betook himself to the squalid shelter of a cabin belonging to an “uncle’s son,” nearly as poor as himself, an unqualified “docther,” whose unprofessional practice it was to prescribe charms and philtres in place of physic. This reckless proceeding was followed by its natural result. The hurt which, with common care, would have readily healed, became inflamed, fever ensued, and the man died. This melancholy finale to the workhouse row caused much excitement, and an investigation of the whole business was instituted by the magistrates. On the day when it took place, the hall of the workhouse was crowded, and although it was shown that the master was justified in using force to protect the kitchen stores from the paupers, and it was also proved that under proper surgical treatment the patient would, in all human probability, have recovered, yet the point to be decided was, whether John Minahan, the master, had used unnecessary violence in the discharge of his duty. The principal witness against him, was a man who appeared with evident “tokens of a foughten field” on his forehead, and who indeed had been the only recipient, besides Tim Murphy, of any serious injury. The examination proceeded nearly as follows:—

After having deposed readily and clearly to the fact of the combat, and of John Minahan having rushed to the rescue of the porridge-pots, he was asked:

“Did you see the master strike any one in particular?”

“Not he, indeed; he was no ways particular; but he murdhered and killed every one that came in his way.”

“Did he strike you?”

“Did he strike me, is it? Why, then, if he did, I paid it back to him handsomely.”

“Answer distinctly. Whom did you see him strike?”

“Ah, then, little matter ’twould be who he’d strike, if the boys had his feeding, and he had theirs to depend on for one month. It’s little good the son of ould Thady Minahan, the tinker, would do, if he was living on Ingy male and water.”

“Come, come,” said the magistrate, impatiently, “give me a plain answer to a plain question. Did Minahan knock _you_ down?”

“Is it the likes of him to knock me down? I’d like to see him try it. He didn’t, nor couldn’t, your Honour’s glory.”

Up started the accused, and cried; “I _did_ knock you down, and bate you well, too. Your Honours,” he continued, turning to the bench, “if I’m to swing for it the next minute, I won’t let _that_ go with the vagabone. I wouldn’t lave it to him to say that I didn’t knock him down, and murder him handsomely to his heart’s content.”

The witness had been summoned to prove that the master had used unnecessary violence; the defendant was there to prove he had not employed more force than the occasion demanded. But would they establish such proofs at the expense of their respective reputations? Should it be said that Tim Murphy’s friend, or John Minahan, were not able to “murther ach other intirely,” at any given minute’s notice? Never! Tim Murphy’s friend would starve on “Ingy male,” and John Minahan would lose his place first.

What became of the witness has not been stated; but the defendant did lose his situation; the guardians of the Union thought that his national ideas of honour were undoubtedly more suited to military than to civil avocations.

Although it is doubtful whether _the_ Irish peculiarity will ever be totally eradicated from the national character, yet the savage custom of faction-fighting is becoming each year more rare. Sometimes, indeed, at the close of a fair a “bit of a fight” does spring up; but the casualties thence resulting, are seldom of a grave or fatal character; and the contending parties may frequently be seen proceeding homewards, with arms lovingly linked together, and tongues vowing eternal friendship; although this, it must be confessed, is an indication of a renewal rather than of the end of an Irish fight.

No doubt the process of fusing the national peculiarities of the three kingdoms is advancing rapidly. It is no wild speculation to anticipate the probability, that fifty years hence there may be little apparent difference between an average native of England, Ireland, (always excepting the “extreme wild Irishman”) or Scotland.

WHERE DWELL THE DEAD?

Where do they dwell? ‘Neath grassy mounts, by daisies,
Lilies, and yellow-cups of fairest gold;
Near grey-grown walls, where in wild, tortuous mazes,
Old clustering ivy wreathes in many a fold:
Where in red summer noons
Fresh leaves are rustling,
Where ’neath large autumn moons
Young birds are nestling—
Do they dwell there?

Where do they dwell? In sullen waters, lying
On beds of purple sea-flowers newly sprung;
Where the mad whirlpool’s wild and ceaseless sighing,
Frets sloping banks, by dark green reeds o’erhung:
Where, by the torrent’s swell,
Crystal stones glitter,
While sounds the heavy bell
Over the river—
Do they dwell there?

No: for in these they slumber to decay,
And their remembrance with their life departs;
They have a home,—nor dark, nor far away—
Their proper home.—within our faithful hearts;
There happy spirits wed,
Loving for ever;
There dwell with us, the dead,
Parting—ah, never—
There do they dwell!

FATE DAYS.

It is a difficult puzzle to reconcile the existence of certain superstitions that continue to have wide influence with the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. When we have read glowing paragraphs about the wonderful progress accomplished by the present generation; when we have regarded the giant machinery in operation for the culture of the people—moved, in great part, by the collective power of individual charity; when we have examined the stupendous results of human genius and ingenuity which are now laid bare to the lowliest in the realm; we turn back, it must be confessed, with a mournful despondency, to mark the debasing influence of the old superstitions which have survived to the present time.

The superstitions of the ancients formed part of their religion. They consulted oracles as now men pray. The stars were the arbiters of their fortunes. Natural phenomena, as lightning and hurricanes, were, to them, awful expressions of the anger of their particular deities. They had their _dies atri_ and their _dies albi_; the former were marked down in their calendars with a black character, to denote ill-luck, and the latter were painted in white characters to signify bright and propitious days. They followed the finger-posts of their teachers. Faith gave dignity to the tenets of the star-gazer and fire-worshipper.

The priests of old taught their disciples to regard six particular days in the year as days fraught with unusual danger to mankind. Men were enjoined not to let blood on these black days, nor to imbibe any liquid. It was devoutly believed that he who ate goose on one of these black days would surely die within forty more; and that any little stranger who made his appearance on one of the _dies atri_ would surely die a sinful and violent death. Men were further enjoined to let blood from the right arm on the seventh or fourteenth of March; from the left arm on the eleventh of April; and from either arm on the third or sixth of May, that they might avoid pestilential diseases. These barbaric observances, when brought before people in illustrations of the mental darkness of the ancients, are considered at once to be proof positive of their abject condition. We thereupon congratulated ourselves upon living in the nineteenth century; when such foolish superstitions are laughed at; and perhaps our vanity is not a little flattered by the contrast which presents itself, between our own highly cultivated condition, and the wretched state of our ancestors.

Yet Mrs. Flimmins will not undertake a sea-voyage on a Friday; nor would she on any account allow her daughter Mary to be married on that day of the week. She has great pity for the poor Red Indians who will not do certain things while the moon presents a certain appearance, and who attach all kinds of powers to poor dumb brutes: yet if her cat purrs more than usual, she accepts the warning, and abandons the trip she had promised herself on the morrow.

Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund for eradicating superstitions from the minds of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka; and while she is calculating the advantages to be derived from a mission to the South Sea Islands, to do away with the fearful superstitious reverence in which those poor dear islanders hold the native flea: a coal pops from her fire, and she at once augurs from its shape, an abundance of money that will enable her to set her pious undertaking in operation; but on no account will she commence collecting subscriptions for the anti-drinking-slave-grown-sugar-in-tea society, because she has always remarked that Monday is her unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle died, and on a Monday she caught that severe cold at Brighton, from the effects of which she is afraid she will never recover.

Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. Her unlucky day is Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman. Mrs. Carmine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is born,—does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.

Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts,—in fact, is by this time quite intimate with one or two of the mysterious brotherhood; but at the same time she is at a loss to understand how any woman in her senses, can believe Thursday to be a more fortunate day than Wednesday, or why Monday is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones’s calendar. She can state, on her oath, that the ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza Artichoke, appeared at her bedside on a certain night and she distinctly saw the mole on its left cheek, which poor Eliza, during her brief career, had vainly endeavoured to eradicate, with all sorts of poisonous things. The ghost, moreover, lisped,—so did Eliza! This was all clear enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it a personal insult for anybody to suggest that her vivid apparitions existed only in her own over-wrought imagination. She had an affection for her ghostly visitors, and would not hear a word to their disparagement.

The unearthly warnings which Mrs. Piptoss had received had well-nigh spoilt all her furniture. When a relative dies, the fact is not announced to her in the commonplace form of a letter,—no, an invisible sledgehammer falls upon her Broadwood, an invisible power upsets her loo-table, all the doors of her house unanimously blow open, or a coffin flies out of the fire into her lap.

Mrs. Grumple, who is a very economical housewife, looks forward to the day when the moon re-appears,—on which occasion she turns her money, taking care not to look at the pale lady through glass. This observance, she devoutly believes, will bring her good fortune. When Miss Caroline has a knot in her lace, she looks for a present; and when Miss Amelia snuffs the candle out, it is her faith that the act defers her marriage for a twelvemonth. Any young lady who dreams the same dream two consecutive Fridays, will tell you that her visions will “come true.”

Yet these are exactly the ladies, who most deplore the “gross state of superstition” in which many “benighted savages” live, and willingly subscribe their money for its eradication. The superstition so generally connected with Friday, may easily be traced to its source. It undoubtedly and confessedly has its origin in scriptural history: it is the day on which the Saviour suffered. The superstition is the more revolting from this circumstance; and it is painful to find that it exists among persons of education. There is no branch of the public service, for instance, in which so much sound mathematical knowledge is to be found, as in the Navy. Yet who are more superstitious than sailors, from the admiral down to the cabin boy? Friday fatality is still strong among them. Some years ago, in order to lessen this folly, it was determined that a ship should be laid down on a Friday, and launched on a Friday; that she should be called “Friday,” and that she should commence her first voyage on a Friday. After much difficulty a captain was found who owned to the name of Friday; and after a great deal more difficulty men were obtained, so little superstitious, as to form a crew. Unhappily, this experiment had the effect of confirming the superstition it was meant to abolish. The “Friday” was lost—was never, in fact, heard of from the day she set sail.

Day-fatality, as Miss Nippers interprets it is simply the expression of an undisciplined and extremely weak mind; for, if any person will stoop to reason with her on her aversion to Mondays, he may ask her whether the death of the poodle, or the catching of her cold, are the two greatest calamities of her life; and, if so, whether it is her opinion that Monday is set apart, in the scheme of Nature, so far as it concerns her, in a black character. Whether for her insignificant self there is a special day accursed! Mrs. Carmine is such a strong-minded woman, that we approach her with no small degree; of trepidation. Wednesday is her _dies ater_, because, in the first place, on a Wednesday she imprudently exposed herself, and is suffering from the consequences; and, in the second place, on a Wednesday her Maria took the scarlet fever. So she has marked Wednesday down in her calendar with a black character; yet her contempt for stars and ghosts is prodigious. Now there is a consideration to be extended to the friends of ghosts, which Day-fatalists cannot claim. Whether or not deceased friends take a more airy and flimsy form, and adopt the invariable costume of a sheet to visit the objects of their earthly affections, is a question which the shrewdest thinkers and the profoundest logicians have debated very keenly, but without ever arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.

The strongest argument against the positive existence of ghosts, is, that they appear only to people of a certain temperament, and under certain exciting circumstances. The obtuse, matter-of-fact man, never sees a ghost; and we may take it as a natural law, that none of these airy visitants ever appeared to an attorney. But the attorney, Mr. Fee Simple, we are assured, holds Saturday to be an unlucky day. It was on a Saturday that his extortionate bill in poor Mr. G.’s case, was cut down by the taxing master; and it was on a Saturday that a certain heavy bill was duly honoured, upon which he had hoped to reap a large sum in the shape of costs. Therefore Mr. Fee Simple believes that the destinies have put a black mark against Saturday, so far as he is concerned.

The Jew who thought that the thunder-storm was the consequence of his having eaten a slice of bacon, did not present a more ludicrous picture, than Mr. Fee Simple presents with his condemned Saturday.

We have an esteem for ghost-inspectors, which it is utterly impossible to extend to Day-fatalists. Mrs. Piptoss, too, may be pitied; but Mog, turning her money when the moon makes her re-appearance, is an object of ridicule. We shall neither be astonished, nor express condolence, if the present, which Miss Caroline anticipates from the knot in her lace, be not forthcoming; and as for Miss Amelia, who has extinguished the candle, and to the best of her belief lost her husband for a twelvemonth, we can only wish for her, that when she is married, her lord and master will shake her faith in the prophetic power of snuffers. But of all the superstitions that have survived to the present time, and are to be found in force among people of education and a thoughtful habit, Day-fatalism is the most general, as it is the most unfounded and preposterous. It is a superstition, however, in which many great and powerful thinkers have shared, and by which they have been guided; it owes much of its present influence to this fact; but reason, Christianity, and all we have comprehended of the great scheme of which we form part, alike tend to demonstrate its absurdity, and utter want of all foundation.

A LETTER ABOUT SMALL BEGINNINGS.

SIR,—Fortunate mistakes are by no means uncommon. In your number seventeen you fall into an error in reference to the Westminster Ragged Dormitory; in the correction of which I have the good fortune to be able to give you some interesting information. You stated that the particular institution there alluded to was founded by Mr. Walker, the city missionary—that was the error. The credit is due, and should have been given to Mr. C. Nash, who was formerly a schoolmaster, employed by Mr. Walker to teach a ragged school which that gentleman had established before “Ragged Schools” had received their appropriate designation and wide popularity.

The tact, management, and energy displayed by Mr. Nash in forming and establishing the St. Ann Street dormitory deserve every praise; but the ground was in some measure prepared for him by his former principal. The manner in which this was done shows “the power of small beginnings,” even in a stronger light than was exhibited in your article with that title.[3]

Footnote 3:

At page 407.

In the year 1840 it became my duty to enquire into the condition of what are but too literally the outcasts of society; and for that purpose obtained introductions to several city missionaries—adequate description of the scenes of harrowing want, disease, and crime into which those gentlemen introduced me, it would be impossible to pen. They alone seemed able to penetrate the dark moral atmosphere. They were always welcomed even by the poorest and the worst.

As one specimen of the efforts made by the Westminster missionaries, I was introduced to a dilapidated shed in New Pye Street. Here I found several young children of both sexes, in rags, and some nearly naked. The scene was most grotesque; the clotted hair, the mud-covered hands and faces, and the haggard countenances, at once told a tale which would have pierced the coldest heart. They were being taught reading and needlework. They were not particularly orderly and some showed a quaint, pantomimic, half-witted disposition to be funny, which pained rather than amused the spectator. Most of them were the sons and daughters of thieves. The small beginning which gave rise to the general idea of Ragged Dormitories took rise in an event for which I can vouch.

The missionary who had formed this school was standing one day, in 1846, at its door, when two adult thieves appealed to him in behalf of a wretched boy who had, they said, been cruelly maltreated and kicked out of doors by his mother, because his day’s prowl for the purpose of thieving had been unsuccessful. “Why do you not take pity on him yourselves?”—asked the missionary. “Why!”—one of them answered,—“why, if you knew what a thief’s life is as well as we do; you would not train a dog to thieving.” It must have been, thought the missionary, a desperate case which could have so forcibly excited the sympathies of two hardened depredators; and he determined to see into it. He soon found the boy; and his condition was too debased for any description which would not excite loathing. Having made the lad decent, he took him to the model lodging-house in Great Peter Street, benevolently commenced and mainly supported by Lord Kinnaird. The boy was kept there for four months; supported three out of the four solely out of the missionary’s slender private funds.

This circumstance forced on his attention the necessity of providing shelter for such juvenile outcasts, and he drew up an appeal to certain benevolent persons to that effect. The secretary of the Ragged School Union immediately promised that if the missionary would find house room, he would find funds. A house was taken in Old Pye Street, which was soon afterwards opened as the Westminster Juvenile Refuge and School of Industry. This establishment was afterwards removed to Duck Lane, where it now flourishes, under a roof which formerly covered a Thieves’ public-house. The transformation is thus described by the gentleman who made it, in a pamphlet now before me:—

“Indulge me for a moment,” he says, “with a glance at the old public-house, (now The Refuge!) Let us look in at the upper room—(now the girls’ school). Here were fifty youths met around their master (as able a one in his calling as England could produce), listening with undivided attention to his instructions on the ‘map,’—(a pair of trowsers suspended from the ceiling)—on the subject of ‘fob-ology,’ or pocket-picking. After this course of tuition, the next was the mock trial—an imitation of the Old Bailey Court, with a _fac-simile_ of its functionaries and ordeal, done with very great taste, and calculated to make the young rascal not only expert in extracting from the fob or pocket, but clever in defence. To train the young novice in his first essay, he was supplied with a glass, below in the tap—(now the dining-room of the children). If successful, then he returned for the purpose of reporting his success, and having a game at skittles in the skittle ground—(now the boys’ school-room.)”

A concise calculation of the respective expenses entailed on the country, in the same house, under its former and present destiny, may here be made. When it was a finishing-school for thieves, each, on conviction and transportation, cost the community not less than one hundred and fifty pounds. Comparing fifty thieves in the upper room with the fifty pupils now in the lower room, we find that, for the first fifty the cost was five thousand five hundred pounds; for the present fifty, two hundred and fifty pounds. Had the five thousand five hundred pounds been used for the preventing instead of the punishing of crime, what would not have been accomplished for these neglected mortals? It would have educated eleven hundred youths, many of whom would not only have been rescued from vice and crime, but have become a blessing instead of a curse to society.

What I have described, then, is the true origin of the class of institutions to which that founded by Mr. Nash belongs.

The Duck Lane Ragged School and Dormitory averages at present a daily attendance of two hundred and twenty children of both sexes, forty have no fathers, twenty eight have no mothers, eighteen are orphans, six of the fathers have been transported. Provision is made for ten who are totally destitute; they are fed and lodged on the premises; twenty-four thieves and vagrants have been admitted during the year, and many more refused for want of support; eleven have emigrated, three have been provided with situations in this country; some of those have spent three, five, seven, and ten years in a course of crime; who have gone forth from this Institution after a moral and an industrial training, and are now doing well.

Three of the emigrants have given an account of themselves in the following joint epistle to Mr. Walker, their benefactor. It is so characteristic that we print it almost literally:—

“_B——, July 18th 1850._
“Mr. Walker,

“Dear Sir,—You may wonder how it is that you have not heard from us
before, but as they that came from Mr. Nash, was going to write, they
promised Mr. Cain that they would acquaint you of our safe arrival. We
left Gravesend on the Sunday morning, and sailed out for the great
depths of the Atlantic, which gave us some _great shakes_ before we
got to our journey’s end. The vessel proved to be in but a sorry
condition for passengers, there being hardly any dry berths on board,
and ours the worst of the whole lot, Mr. Cain and Churn got another
berth aft, and Fred and me had to take to the sails room aft where we
stopt during the remainder of the voyage. We had four deaths on board,
two babies, one old lady, and one of the poor sailors who fell from
the fore top across the windlass, which killed him instantly. We made
the passage in about five weeks and five days, as we arrived at New
York on the 17th of May. We found it to be a place quite different to
our likeing, and so we left it and proceeded up the country without
anything in our pockets, for we were determined not to be discouraged,
though in a strange land, for we knew that we had the same eye
watching over us here as we had in England so we pushed on, on board
of a canal boat that was going to Buffalo, but stopping about 2½ Miles
from the Town of B—— on account of a breakage in the canal, we took
the opportunity to look round the Town for work and was fortunate
enough to fall into work, the three of us. Fred is learning the
harness making, as he did not much care about learning the shoemaking
over again, as me and Churn has to do, for the work here is as
different to what we had been accustomed to as light from darkness. I
do scarcely anything but upper leathers, with now and then a pair or
two of Boy’s Boots which I make here in about three hours, being all
pegged work, as for closing you must not take a day to close one pair,
but must do 16 or 18 pair a day, and 6 or 8 pair of what you call
Wellingtons. So you will see by this that it is no use coming over
unless you mean to work in downright ernest, for they think of nothing
but of making money, up at ½ past 4 four in the morning, begin work at
five and keep on till seven in the evening, and no time allowed for
your meals but eat away as fast as you like and then back again to
work, our breakfast here beats all the dinners in England, for theres
roast and boil meats, pies, puddings, cakes, salids, tea, coffee,
bread and butter which latter article comes on at all meals. We had
grand doings here on the fourth of July, in anniversary of their
Independence fireworks, Bonfires, Circus, shows, firemen going round
all the City with the engines decorated out with flowers which look
very pretty. The President of the united States died at Washington on
the tenth of this month of Billious Diarrhoæ, he is to be buried on
Friday the 12th. Twenty years ago this Town was nothing but a low
swampy mass of Land, with but one house on it, now it is a flourishing
place with twenty thousand inhabitants, its rise is owing to a salt
spring about 2 miles off where they make vast quantities of salt,
indeed it is one of the chief trades here it employs about three
thousand hands all the summer, but they do not work at it in the
winter, their weekly earnings are from 4 to 5 Dollars that is 1 pound
English. It is very hard work I can tell you, in this country were the
thermometer is never much less than 100 during the summer, where they
have got to stand over large Furnaces, attending to the boiling of the
salt. I do not think that I shall rest contended over here longer than
a few years, for a man earns not a fraction more here than he does in
England, the only difference is, that he works more hours here than he
does there and consequently he is glad to get home to rest himself,
instead of fooling his money away at the pothouse, and then some of
the things are rather cheaper here, and as I told you before they only
think of getting money. I shall write and let you know more about it
when I have been over some time longer, I shall then I guess know more
about the place. You can tell the others if they come over that I
should advise them to push up a little higher in the country than stop
in New York as it is far better, and tell them that they need not mind
having any money for they will not starve over here for we found the
people very kind to us here not like they are in England. You must
excuse this funny letter, as it is the work of several evenings, and
therefore it may read curious, for I have felt rather unsettled as yet
being among strangers, but I will write you another shortly, when I
feel more at home, and will give you a further description of the
place, so you must excuse all faults. Timothy Case left his place in
New York, for what reason I do not know further than that he said he
only was going there till we came that he might go with us, as he felt
sure when I saw New York that I should not stop in it, and that if we
would not go with him, he should then have gone by himself. I felt
very vexed with him at leaving, and tried to persuade to stop but it
was no use, so Fred and me took him under our care and got our boss to
take him where he is now learning the harness making. I guess he will
get about 20 Dollars a year he being hardly an inch taller than he was
at home. When you return an answer direct to me at Mr. Apples Boot and
Shoe Store 8 Empire Block B—— Onoydaga County State of New York. They
don’t say streets, but call them Blocks, and they _guess_ they don’t
_think_ here so I suppose that I shall get a regular Yankee in time.
It is tremendous hot here now, and I feel it so when at work very
much. Tell Mr. Slade that I will write him a letter _soon_. I get
2_s._ 6_d._ english money a week or 30 Dollars a year of this, board
lodging and washing which is pretty fair wages here for boys, learning
pegged work, the general pay being 15 or 18 dollars a year, but as we
had learned the other work our boss gave us thirty, (boss here is what
they call the Master in England) Fred and Churn gets the same wages,
as me, you must give all our best loves and wishes to all the School
children, and we hope that they will all value their learning, which
they will find will be a blessing and comfort to them hereafter. You
can tell them that I often think of them when I sit at work and that I
almost fancy that I am in the old shop once more hearing their voices
as they say their lessons showing how strong fancy leads us back again
to old familiar scenes, I hope that God will bless and prosper them
all in this life, and that he will take them to his everlasting home
is the fervent prayer of John Jones. Give our love to all kind friends
at home, for so I am bound to call it, and receive the same yourself
with Mrs. W—— and Harriet.

“From yours ever affectionate pupils,
“J. J., J. H. C., and F. J.”

Before reception into the Duck Lane School, all these boys had been thieves. J. J. had lived by plunder for seven years; J. H. C. had been a thief from early childhood; and F. J. from the age of five years.

* * * * *

_On the 20th inst. will be published, price 5s. 6d., neatly bound in
Cloth_,

THE FIRST VOLUME
OF
“HOUSEHOLD WORDS,”

_Containing Numbers 1 to 26_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

581 her with a curtesy, and thought her with a curtsey, and thought
how pleased how pleased

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).