The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1847-04-08
A Week in ireland.
LEAVES FROM THE EDITORS JoUR>

LEAVES FROM THE EDITORS JOURNAL.
SkiJbcreen Feb. 20. II Rev. Mr.
Fitzpatrick called, with several gentlemen Of
the town, and in their company took my first
walk through the potter's field of desttuton
and DEATH AS soon as we opened the door
a crowd of haggard creatures pressed upon US
and with agonizing prayers for bread, follow
ed us to the soup kitchen. One poor woman
whose cntrcatie8 became irresistibIy importu-
nate, had watched all night in the grave yard
lest the body of her husband should be stolen
from his last resting place, to which he had
been consigned yesterday. She had left five
children sick with the famine fever in her how
ell and she raised an exceeding bitter cry for
help. A man with swollen feet pressed close
ly upon US, and begged for bread most pit
eously. He had pawned his shoes for food,
which he had already consumed. The soup
kitchen was surrounded by a cloud of these
famine spectres, half naked and standing or
sitting in the mud, beneath cold DRILLING
rain. The narrow deflc to the dispensary
bar was choked with young and old of both
sexes, struggling forward with their rusty tin
and iron vessels for soup some of them upon
all tours like famished beasts. There was
cheap bread dispensary opened in one end of
the building; and the principal pressure was
at the door of this. Among the attenuated
apparitions of humanity that thronged this
gate Of stinted charity, one poor man present
cd himself under circumstances that even dis
tingushed his case from the rest. He lived
several miles from the centre of the town, in
one of the rural districts, where he found him
self on the eve of perishing, with his family of
seven small children. Life was worth the
last struggle of nature, and the miserable
skeleton of father, had fastened his young
est child to his back and with four more by
his side, had staggered up to the door, just as
we entered the bread department of the es-
adjustment The hair upon his face was
nearly as long as that upon his head His
cheeks were fallen in, and his jaws so distend-
ed that he could scarcely articulate word
His four little children were sitting upon the
ground by his feet, nesting together, and try
ing to hide their naked limbs under their
dripping rags. How these poor things could
stand upon their feet and ,0alh five miles as
they had done, could not conceive.
Theirappearancc, though common to thous-
ands in this region Of the shadow of death,
was inde5cribablc. Their psleness was not
that Of common sickness. There was no sal
low tinge N it They did not look as if new
ly raised from the grave and to life before the
blood had begun to fill their veins anew; but
as if they had just been thawed out of the ice,
in which they had been imbcdded until their
blood had turned to water.
Leaving this battlefield Of life, accom-
panied Mr. Fitzpatrick the Catholic minister
into one of the howell lanes Of the town. We
found in every tenement we entered enough
to scken the stouteSt heart In one we found
A shoemaker who was at work before hole
in the mud wall of his hut, about as large as
a small pane of glass. There were five in his