The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-07-27

poorer clothes for lack Of ready money
to buy the cheapest products of the
machines-and dyeing in few dark
and simple colors as BELTS Ireland's social
atmosphere. Perhaps the colleen is trans
ferred to the kitchen of some farmers wife,
where she washes the plates that have each
a shamrock leaf in it's middle; and is
her awkward hands. The pig-feeding is
her charge, and the nursing of the FROST
bitten lambs, and the spreading of the linen
on the hedges. and again she is cuffed if
the crows or the sparrows come down and
soil the snowy Wilderness of the cloths.
Her days are full enough of work, for the
farmers wife feels the pinch of the times
in spite of the generous reductions fire.
quently made by the good landlord through
the kind agents. to quote from the adver--
tisement of a recent leasehold sale, and
puts on herself and one peasant girl, per
or three. There are potatoes to boil, and
cabbage and bacon and pans to scour, and
eggs to hunt, and chickens to feed, and
cows to milk; and through the summer the
farmer will expect her to work in the fields,
wedding potatoes by hand on her knees, in
stead of with hoe.
If she is exceptionally trustworthy and
he is busy with the haying, he will send her
to market, and then you will see her driv-
ing small and rough-coated donkey,
meek-looking and miserable. The donkey
is fastened to a small and dingy two
wheeled cart, and in the cart, on sack of
potatoes.it has no seat-or on top Of box
that holds a squealing pig, sits Maggie;
and anon she calls, "Och! murdher! was
there liver SIGH a haste? Git along wild ye!
Arrah look at We, Micky; ask ye now an
tell me, do ye know its folve miles from
home We be?" And then there rises q
snatch of ballad. for Maggie, in spite of
all, is light-h hearted, and Micky manages a
Flooding sort of trot. and the queer little
outfit joys by with squeal and smile.
If Maggie had been a managing mother,
many basket of new-laid eggs-for lack of
| which the little gossoOns and colleens may
go hungry-will find its way nicely covered
''big house." in return for which and for
many smiles and suave batteries it may be
in time that powerful parsonage will speak
a good word for little Maggie, and the un-
derling of the farmers wife will find her
self promoted from the farmstead to the
boycott-there to be scullery maid, with
further promotions il she proves an apt
scholar through all the grades of under and
upper housemaid and white capped parloI
maid. perhaps in time even to be house
keeper and hold whole retinue under hel
in awe.
To serve the Protestant landlord Is in
many districts a forbidden choice to the
peasant girl. and. indeed. owing to thu
growing poverty of the landlord classes the
trains of servants are every year cut shorter
| SO that the rosy colleen bawn, turned II
may one day find herself, with all the
fortune her mother could bestow ON he
tied mp in a big colored handkerchief, OF
| the forward deck of a steamer blowing i'll
way out of Queenstown, to'lie down in he
cramped berth in the ships bowels by nigh
and sit on a coil of rope straining her eye
toward the horizon by day, until she tread
the streets of new city, to put on awk
wardness with her cheap, new hnery as sh
J puts of the smell of the peat bog
with her homespun petticoats, t
try the patience of the American house
| wife with her strangeness and her is
, norance, to send home money to take car
. over all the rest of the wild little gossoor
. and colleens, to lose the freshness of hs
{ color in different climate and under
. tighter roof and to sail back again mayt
{ IN half a dozen years. this time in IL
/ second cabin to air her silk dress an
her jet trimmed wrap and her glitterir
s rhinestone jewels before her some tin
playmates, to see her old home and let b.
g new prosperity be fairly understood befo
|. lutely westward to marry and bring up b.
r children not as peasants but as American
q The peasant girl who doesn't emipra
II marries young. Her husband is a peasa]
o lad, and he takes her to q cabin that ia nj
v turesque enough outside, comfortle
" enough within. It is built of rough stone
% whitewashed. with roof of thatch in viii,
i great splendid crimson poppies are bloor
d ing. frightening all the landscape aroui
e and giving IN oddly festive AIR to 1
q premises. There Is one low door il