Hugh Quigley - The Cross and the Shamrock
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Hugh Quigley >> The Cross and the Shamrock
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"Ye can't travel nohow to-night," said the boss; "the roads will be
blocked up, chuck full."
"We'll have to travel, sir," said the Irishman, "or die in the attempt;
so let us have the cutter. Charge what you have a mind to."
"Why, what in the world can be the matter? Ye ain't subpoenaed, or going
to arrest somebody?" said the jolly boss.
"Ah, no such thing, man," said the farmer; "but there is a woman
dangerously ill, and yon gentleman in the sitting room is a doctor,
going to visit her. Cost what it may, we must go ahead."
"O, that alters the case. Why did you not say so at first? and you
should have had it and welcome. It will be ready in no time. Hitch on to
that new, light cutter in the shed, Sam," said he to the hostler.
"Ya, ya," said Sam; and in five minutes the priest and his guide were
again proceeding on their charitable mission. They reached their
destination about two o'clock in the night, just one hour before the
death of her on whose account they had come such a journey. Father
O'Shane--poor old gentleman!--suffered terribly; had his ears
frostbitten, and two of his fingers frozen. But no matter; a soul was to
be saved, and that consideration alleviated all his sufferings, and
rendered him dead to every thing--cold, pain, watchings, hunger, thirst,
and weariness; nay, even death itself was but a trivial, inadequate
price to be paid by a mortal man to gain an immortal soul to Christ and
eternal happiness.
"'Tis an awful night, reverend sir," said O'Leary. "I fear we can't go
ahead."
"What matter, O'Leary," said Father O'Shane, "as we reached in time?
What is this night and all its violence compared with the sufferings of
a poor soul in the next world? All I regret is that you did not send me
in the sick call sooner. All is well, however; she was perfectly
conscious, and, I hope, worthily received all the rites of religion.
Hold up! you will rest well to-night, your conscience at ease, after
having been engaged in such a meritorious act of charity."
In nothing does the church of God manifest the divinity of her origin
and mission more than in the care which she bestows on her children, the
adopted brethren of Jesus Christ, at the awful hour of death. She
reserves all her good things for this her last service to her children.
She sends her keys there, to the bedside of the dying man, to open to
him the gate to the calm and peaceful walks of justification. She sends
her oils thither, too, to anoint the Christian gladiator for his last
and final struggle with his powerful enemies. She sends her divine
manna, to strengthen him and sustain him for the trying and unknown
journey; and she sends the music of her sweet hymns and litanies to
cheer him on, and the light of indulgences and benedictions to guide his
soul, illumine his understanding, and shed the rays of their heavenly
reflection on the difficult passage that he has to traverse. And this
food, these blessings, gifts, and graces, she has ready for all
repentant sinners without exception, be they the inmates of the true
fold, or straying without the boundaries of the city of God; be they the
timorous souls who are already washed, or the negligent, who have
followed the hard ways of the world. If, in her other functions, the
spouse of Christ is "terrible as an army set in array," "fair as the
moon, and beautiful as the setting sun," in this, her last office at the
death bedside, she is all mercy, tenderness, and goodness. O, how cold,
selfish, and intolerable would life be, if the Catholic church was not
present, on all occasions, with the graces, blessings, and consolations
of Christ!
"O Lord, if it be thy will, deprive us of every thing--riches, health,
renown, pleasure; but never leave thy creatures, thy inheritance, thy
children, without the consolations of thy church! O Lord, the many sheep
that are here not of thy fold gather and bring in speedily, that there
may be but one fold and one Shepherd, as thou thyself hast foretold."
Thus prayed this pious priest of God, after having added another strayed
sheep to the fold of his divine Master; and his soul was at peace.
For two days the storm continued unabated, the whole country becoming
like an undulating ocean of snow. Drift snow, mountain high, was
accumulated in the valleys between hills; whole herds of sheep and
cattle were suffocated; and the bodies of several teamsters, whose teams
were overset, were dug out lifeless from under the drifts by the men who
had assembled with their ox teams and shovels to open the interrupted
communication with the city.
Father O'Shane bemoaned his fate in doleful terms; the more so as Sunday
was approaching, when he feared he should be absent from his
congregation; and he also regretted that he had it not in his power,
according to his promise to the widow O'Clery, to visit her next day,
and provide for her poor orphans among the benevolent of his flock. And,
well aware of the character of the hard-hearted Van Stingey, he
shuddered for the fate of the children.
The apprehensions of the good priest were not groundless; for no sooner
was the body of Mrs. O'Clery consigned to its narrow, cold habitation,
than the official, assisting the children into the sleigh that had borne
their mother's body to the tomb, drove off in a rapid trot towards the
poorhouse.
"Have we far to go yet, sir?" said Paul, thinking that the "county
house" was something different from the much dreaded poorhouse. "I am
afraid Bridget will perish with cold, sir."
"No fears of her; she's hardy, I guess."
"Yes, sir, but her dress is so very light."
"Well, she can pull that ere buffalo around her."
"Ou, hou, hou!" cried Bridget, breathing on her little bare hands, which
she kept pressed to her lips.
"I hope, sir, you are not going to take us to the poorhouse," said Paul;
"we don't want to go there. The priest that attended my mother--God rest
her soul!--told us he would provide for us."
"Indeed! How can he do so?" said Van Stingey.
"Why, sir, I don't know; but perhaps he will write to my uncle, who is a
vicar general in Ireland, and he will send us money to take us back
home."
"Is your uncle in the British sarvice, then, and a general in the army?"
"No, sir, but he is a priest next to the bishop in station in the
church."
"That's it, eh? Wal, I guess you better not talk of going back, any how.
You must live here in this free country, and learn to be a man and a
Christian--a thing you could not be at home, in the old country."
"I beg your pardon, sir," replied Paul; "the very best Christians are in
Ireland, which was once called the 'Isle of Saints,' when all the people
were Catholics; and where I came from, even now, they are all mostly
Catholics. There are in the whole parish but two _peelers_, the minister
and his wife, and the tithe proctor, or collector of tithes; in all,
five Protestants."
"You are a lad, I see," said the official, as he dismounted from the
sleigh and ordered the children to enter their new home.
"O, woe, woe, woe!" cried they, as they found themselves admitted as
_paupers_, and enclosed within the precincts of the terrible poorhouse.
"O Lord, what will we do?" cried they. "O sir, don't keep us here, or
send word to the priest first. I will go to his house, myself," said
Paul.
"Shet up, ye little fools!" said the official; "this is a better place
nor ye think. Ye ain't going to get no potatoes, nohow, but something
better than ye ever were used to. Take these young 'uns to the stove in
the kitchen," said he to an under official. And the sobs and groans of
the destitute orphans were drowned in the uproarious rumbling of the
gong that called the officers of the establishment to dinner, it being
now noon.
The repugnance of the Irishman to the poorhouse is proverbial. Neither
prison, dungeon, nor death is invested with greater horror, in the minds
of the peasantry of Ireland, than this institution. Solely founded, as
they are told, for their special use and benefit, there are instances,
countless, on record, where the affectionate mother has thanked Heaven,
when by fever, plague, or hunger it deprived her of her darling infant,
rather than that it should become an inmate of the poorhouse!
"Is not this prejudice unreasonable and strange?" it will be asked. "And
why is it that the Irishman shuns and abhors an institution which his
English neighbor enjoys and petitions to enter?" The reasons are
numerous, and the difference in the feelings of both obvious and
palpable. It must be first remarked, that the Irish are a traditional
people, and remarkably conservative of the customs and usages of their
ancestors. They look back into the history of their country, or consult
their fathers and grandfathers, and in vain look back for the existence
of a poorhouse, or any necessity for its existence, before the advent of
the "godly reformation" and the established church in their midst. They
heard of such establishments as the ancient "_beataghs_," or houses of
hospitality, which were provided for the stranger and destitute in every
townland, the doors of which were open day and night, and on the boards
of which cooked victuals for scores of men were continually ready. These
were the substitute for the poorhouse in the days when England and all
Europe sent their poor scholars to receive a gratuitous education among
the inhabitants of the Island of Saints. There the poor and the hungry
could come in and eat, and be filled, and go his way, without being
questioned who he was, without being asked for a _pauper ticket_ to
admit him, without being obliged or compelled to lead a life of
celibacy, or running the risk of his soul's salvation, to keep his body
from perishing of hunger.
In a word, when Brian Boru expelled the Danes from Ireland, when Hugh
O'Niel triumphed over the troops of Elizabeth, as well as when Dathi
held the sceptre, or Nial of the hostages planted his colors on the
Alps, there was enough to feed the poor of Ireland. There was no
necessity for a poorhouse; and there is no need of it now, says the
Irish peasant, if justice was done to Ireland. "Give us back our
monasteries and abbeys, and we will bestow you the poorhouses."
Besides these considerations, the English poorhouse has this advantage
over the Irish one--that the former is conducted and presided over by
Englishmen, who have a sympathy for, or at least are of, the same blood,
religion, and race with its inmates. But in Ireland the case is
different. The poorhouses, prison-like edifices, in Elizabethan style of
architecture, presided over by Englishmen, generally, and nominees of
the crown, are a monument of conquest and tyranny.
The inmates being principally "mere Irish," and the cost of their
support derived chiefly from the land, the landlords consider their
health, comfort, or life of only secondary importance. Hence we find the
number of deaths in these charnel houses averaging that of years of
plague; and each pauper is allowed far less weekly for his support than
the lord of the soil allows the meanest dog in his kennel. Add to these
the separation of man and wife, the isolation of members of the same
family, the dangers of perversion and proselytism to the thinning ranks
of the "law church;" and then, if you can, blame the poor Irishman for
his horror of the dreadful poorhouse of England. He saw hundreds of his
neighbors enter the gates of the poorhouse, but he never saw one return
back. Less active imaginations than that of the Irish peasant would be
worked on so as to conclude that some means more _active_ than sickness
or old age were had recourse to, for the purpose of lessening the taxes
on land, by getting rid of the poor.
In truth, the British poorhouse is a great government establishment,
where the sons of the low squirearchy are provided for--a terrible mill,
where the bodies and souls of Irishmen and women are ground up and
annihilated--a labor-saving machine of political economy, introduced
into the world by the robbers of the reformation, in order to get rid of
surplus population, and in order that the Lazaruses of society might not
disturb the false repose of their hypocrisy, by begging the crums that
fall from their plunder-burdened tables!
The American poorhouse, however, is of quite a different description,
and the promptitude and unanimity of the public mind regarding the
necessity of a law to provide for the support of the poor are among the
most laudable traits in the American character. In America, the
patrimony of the poor was never wrested from the church, to which God
committed their care; the charities and bequests of ages were not
plundered and squandered by the vilest of the human race, as in Britain;
hospitals, churches, abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other endowed
provisions for the poor, were not robbed and confiscated by the
sectarians of the new world, (probably because they did not exist
there;) and hence the essential difference between the English and
American poorhouse. There is no part of the Scripture the reformation
people so rigidly adhered to, or now pretend to adhere to, as the
advice of Judas, "Let this be sold and given to the poor." They made the
sale, but the poor they left unprovided for, till their numbers
increased so as to threaten the ill-gotten goods of the plunderers, who
at length passed laws compelling the poor to support the poor. And this
was the origin of poorhouses--a true Protestant creation.
CHAPTER V.
THE O'CLERYS.
The O'Clery family was an ancient and honored one in Ireland. Princes,
chieftains, and warriors of the name were renowned before Charlemagne or
Alfred ascended the throne, or before any of the petty princes of the
heptarchy ruled over the barbarous Saxons. Like all the royal and noble
houses of Europe, the O'Clerys, after ages of glory and prosperity, had
their hour of decline and decay also. But it was a question whether the
virtues of this renowned house were more brilliant or conspicuous in the
zenith of its glory, or in its fallen or humbled state. The Irish church
founded by Saint Patrick never wanted an O'Clery to adorn her sanctuary
or to record her victories. The annals of the Four Masters will stand to
the end of the world as a proud monument of the services rendered to the
Irish church and to history by these illustrious annalists; and when the
deeds of the most renowned knights and chieftains of this royal house
shall have been obliterated by the merciless chisel of time, the authors
of the Four Masters' Annals will become only brighter among the shining
stars that adorn the literary firmament of old Ireland.
The martyrology of the Irish church can attest the virtues of constancy
and patriotism with which the O'Clerys bore their share of the wrongs of
Erin and of her faithful sons. Whether or not the subjects of our
narrative, the poor emigrant orphans, had any of this royal and noble
blood flowing in their veins, is a thing that we cannot genealogically
vouch. But that they were not degenerate sons of Erin, or faithless to
their allegiance to the glorious old church of their fathers, we trust
this history will amply demonstrate. At all events, the uncle of our
hero, Paul O'Clery, held a very high station in the Irish hierarchy.
Having, with eclat, finished his ecclesiastical and literary primary
studies in the colleges of his native land, he subsequently repaired to
Rome, where he won with distinction the title of "doctor in divinity and
canon law," and carried the first premium from many French, German, and
even Italian competitors. Hence, soon after his return from abroad, on
account of his learning, as well as his tried virtues, he was appointed
the vicar general of the diocese of Kil----, a promotion which, far from
exciting the envy, gained the unanimous approval, of the diocesan
clergy. During the horrors of the general landlord persecution of the
Irish Catholics, (for it is nothing else than a persecution of
Catholics,) the O'Clerys found their name on the roll of the proscribed,
and got notice to quit the homestead of their fathers. The principal
cause for this proscription by the landlord was, that Dr. O'Clery, in
the newspapers, exposed the system of cruel and barbarous extermination
which took place on the extensive estates of Lord Mandemon--a gentleman
who said he thought it far more honorable, as well as profitable, to
have his princely estates in Munster tenanted by fat cattle than by
Irish Papists. His lordship had also the mortification to learn that all
the meat, money, and clothing he had employed for the last five years
could not make one single sincere convert to his rich "law
establishment." When the "praties" were dear, and the crops failed,
there were a few, to be sure, who would profess themselves ready to "ate
the mate" on Friday; but as soon as plenty returned, the "new lights"
went out, or returned to ask pardon of God, the priest, and the people;
and Lord Mandemon and his soup were pitched to the "seventy-nine
devils." This failure, this result, so often before seen and felt, and
so certain to follow, was, in his zeal for proselytism, attributed by
his lordship to Dr. O'Clery's zeal and learning. For, whenever or
wherever he went among the peasantry to preach to them in their own
sweet and loved dialect, the "jumpers, the new lights, and the soupers"
disappeared like the locusts from Egypt when exorcised by the magic rod
of Moses. Hence the hatred with which the O'Clerys were persecuted.
Hence, also, the oath of Lord Mandemon, that he would never return to
his home in England till every Papist on his estates was rooted out.
This oath was kept by his lordship, probably the only true one he ever
swore; for in less than a fortnight he fell a victim to the cholera, and
expired on board the Princess Royal steamboat on her return to
Liverpool.
Arthur O'Clery, father to the subject of our tale, sold out a second
farm he held near Limerick, turned all his effects into money, bade
adieu to his beloved brother, Dr. O'Clery, who was averse to his
emigration, and, in the autumn, set sail from Liverpool for New York, in
the ship Hottinguer. He had all his family with him: they were
comfortably provided with all necessaries, and, besides, had one
thousand pounds, in hard cash, to start with in the new world. They were
not long out at sea, when, owing to the crowd on board, the lack of
proper arrangements, and room, or ventillation, as well as on account of
the cruelly of the inhuman captain, ship fever and cholera broke out on
board.
The number of bodies consigned to the ocean from that unlucky vessel was
from five to ten daily, and among the victims of the plague was Arthur
O'Clery. He was the only one of the cabin passengers who was attacked by
the epidemic, which, in the ardor of his charity, he contracted while
attending on, and ministering to, the wants of the poor steerage
passengers.
Sad and impressive was the scene when the Rev. H. O'Q----, a young Irish
priest on board, in the middle hold of the ship, where O'Clery had been
removed by order of the captain, called on the six hundred surviving
passengers to kneel while he was administering the rites of the church
to the benefactor of them all. Never was a call on the piety and faith
of any number of men more cheerfully obeyed. Instantaneously that mixed,
nondescript crowd--Irish, English, Scotch, Welsh, Dutch--Catholic,
Protestant, infidel--fell on their knees, and, if they did not pray,
they paid that _outward homage_ to Religion which sometimes the most
indifferent and irreligious cannot resist paying her. Infidelity is a
great coward, as well as a false guide. In her hour of ease and satiety,
she pretends to scorn the threats and judgments of the Most High, and,
like Satan in his pandemonium, to make war on Heaven; but no sooner does
the roaring of the thunderbolt shake the earth, or the vast abyss open
its devouring throat to swallow her unhappy victims, than she hides her
head in the caves of the earth, or, flying to some secure place,
abandons her votaries to the forlorn hope of trusting to the weakness of
their own minds for resources to extricate themselves from the evils
that threaten them. It was so on board the ill-fated Hottinguer. Those
who, under the influence of the security offered by the prosperous
sailing of the few first days, were bold, independent, and defiant of
danger, no sooner did they see their comrades thrown overboard, after a
few hours' sickness, than their hearts failed within them, their tone of
defiance was turned into despair, their mockery of religion ceased, and
that priest of God, whom they ridiculed, insulted, and despised for the
first few days, was now respected, confided in, and regarded by them
with sentiments bordering on religious homage.
Fervently did that priest, who thanked God that he was on hand, pray,
not that God would restore him to his wife and children,--for all hope
of recovery was now gone,--but that, in accordance with the anxious
desire of the dying man, he should have the privilege of burial in a
Christian, consecrated tomb.
"Pray, father," said he, "that, if it be God's holy will, I may be
buried in a consecrated soil. It seems to me a sort of profanation, that
the cruel fishes and those monsters of the deep, which we see leaping
around the vessel, should devour my flesh, united with, and I hope
sanctified now by, the flesh and blood of my Lord."
The priest did pray, and the people joined in that impulsive prayer of
faith, and that prayer was heard; for, though O'Clery breathed his last
on board, and, by the captain's orders, the sailors--poor fellows!--were
standing around his berth, prepared, as soon as the last breath left
him, to throw him overboard, yet he lingered for three days after; and
they reached quarantine before that pure soul quitted its tenement of
clay and winged its flight to heaven. The wife and her children had the
body conveyed to shore and interred in the Catholic cemetery of New
York, where a neat marble monument could be seen with these words
inscribed:--
_"Pray for the soul of Arthur O'Clery, whose body lies underneath.
Requiescat in pace. Amen."_
It was thus that the O'Clerys were deprived of their good and virtuous
father, and the widow of her husband; but this, as already has been
partly seen, was but the beginning of their woes; for, after their
arrival in New York, an individual, who, during the voyage, ingratiated
himself with the family by his attention around the sick man's bed,
joined them at their lodgings. But in a few days they found him gone one
morning, after their return from mass at Barclay Street Church, and with
him the canvas bag, containing the thousand pounds in gold and Bank of
England notes left by them in a trunk. Thus were six persons, strangers
and destitute in a great city, reduced from competency to poverty at
"one fell swoop" by the villany of a pretended friend and associate.
"O Lord, pity me! One misfortune never comes alone," groaned the now
poor and afflicted widow O'Clery, when she was informed by little
Bridget that the "trunk was broke open," and all the things ransacked
"through and fro."
She soon saw that all she had was gone, and concluded that Cunningham,
as he was absent from breakfast contrary to his wont, must be the thief.
The police got immediate notice; advertisements were issued, and rewards
offered, and in a day or two after Cunningham was arrested; but as none
of the money was found on his person, and as there was no direct
evidence of his guilt, the magistrate discharged him. The articles of
dress in her well-supplied wardrobe were detained, in payment of her
board bill, by the hotel keeper where she lodged in New York; and with
the few shillings that remained in her purse, she, with her children,
took passage on one of the Hudson River boats, hoping to make out
certain acquaintances of her husband, whom she heard were settled in the
vicinity of T----. The rest has been already told--namely, how she took
sick and died after great sufferings; how her children were left
destitute, and next to naked; how they were now reduced to the rank of
paupers, and secured within the precincts of the county house.
"Of all the things which we brought from home with us, we have nothing
of value now left, Bridget," said Paul, "but this silver crucifix, which
belonged to my grandfather. Glory be to God. Let us be glad that this
has been left," said he, kissing it with religious affection. "This is
all we have now left. Let us defend it."
CHAPTER VI.
THE COUNCIL.
Father O'Shane was now several days weather bound and laid up sick in
Vermont, where, with great anxiety, he waited the first opportunity to
return home to his mission; and the orphans were safely lodged in the
poorhouse, where our friend Paul, to calm the anxiety and dispel the
grief of his younger companions, began to contrast, with an air of
satisfaction, the aspect of things here with what he had heard of the
horrors of the Irish poorhouse.
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