The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1880-06-22
A land without Laug hter.

# James heupdtu, III new 1OTh lTlDunP.
The Irish have been described by novelists
and travellers as a light hearted rollicking
people, full of fun and quick in repartee, a
devil-may-care race of folks, equally reaCy to
dance or fight. l have not found them so.
i found them in the west of Ireland a sad
and respondent people, carewo"n, broken
hearted and shrouded in gloom. Never once,
in the hundreds of cabins that l entered
never once even-did l see "a merry eye OF
hear the sound of a merry voice. Old men
and boys, old women and girls, young men
and maldens-all of them without a solitary
exception-were grave or haggard, and every
household looked as if the plague of the first
born had smitten it that day. Rachel. weep
ing for her children, would have passed un-
noticed among these warm hearted peasants,
Tor, if she had been noticed they would only
lave said, "she is one of u.s. A home with
D ut a child is cherries enough; but here is a
whole region without a child's laugh in it.
Cabins full of children-and no boisterous
lglee! No need to tell these children to be
quiet. The famine has tanned their restless
spirits, and they crouch around the bit Of
peat fire without uttering a word. Often they
do not look a second time at the stranger who
comes into their cabin.
| have seen so many sad sights in Ireland
that it would be hard for me to choose the
worst of them. But the one incident that
made the deepest impression on my mind
was q visit to the convent of the Sisters of
Mercy at Westport, in the county of Mayo. The
Rev. Mother, who founded it, l believe, and
who now has charge OF it, is a relative of
Archbishop Cullen; and, before the famine
came. by her own zeal and the influence of
her own social connections, she had been able
10 build quite a handsome and solid institu-
'tion. As the Sisters are the best teachers in
tina neighborhood, the girls of the well-to-do
citizens of Westport are taught at the convent.
But it is also a~riindnstrial school, to which the
waits of society are sent by the govern
ment. From the fees of the town children
and the money paid by thu. government, aided
by the contributions of Catholic benevolence
lin Ireland and England, the convent has al
ways been able to maintain itself well and,
having inspected scores of similar institutions
in our own country, supported both by pub
lie charity and the state, / can truthfully say,
not from courtesy only, but knowledge, that
The Westport convent Iced fear no COMPARE
son with any industrial school in America.
Everything is clean and wholesome and
cheerful about it. But what recalled Amer
lea to me when i visited it was not its order
NOR it's tidiness but the fact that the children
IN the industrial school looked happy and
siniled-that they were well behaved little
girls with laughing eyes, not the sad old
women disguised as ragged girls, whom l had
seen with pink and ehilblained feet, mute AMI
shivering in the slippery and smoky cabins of
he country. And yet these happy children,
he only children l saw in the west-were
either orphans or paupers or castaways in the
streets!
Can America conceive of a country whose
only happy children are in a public institu-
ion? Ii you can do so, then you see the
west of Ireland in the winter of 1880. Now
don't say, "God pity them - just pity them
yourself first. They need no more prayers,
fout they do need more meal.