RICHARD O'KENNEDY.

(1850)

FATHER O'KENNEDY was born April 17, 1850. He was educated in Limerick, and studied at Maynooth for the priesthood. He is parish priest of Fedamore, near Bruff. Father O'Kennedy has been for a long time a contributor to various Irish and American magazines. He knows his people intimately, and knows how to interest us in the simple pains and pleasures of the poor. To be in his company is to go the rounds of his parish with the priest, and, because we are with him, to be admitted into the sacred intimacies of the people. His style is charming. He has an eye for the simplicities of life.

A ROUND OF VISITS.

From 'Cottage Life in Ireland.'

As we are so near, we will step across the water-course to see a poor little invalid, Bridgie Hanlon. Bridgie's mother is a widow, and after the death of her husband things went greatly against her. She met with accidents in cattle and loss of crops, and, one way or other, the family came to be very poor. Indeed, were it not for the good parish priest they would be elsewhere. He went to the rent officer, and obtained for them time and abatements, and little by little they have risen again; for " God is good," as poor Mrs. Hanlon would say, and they are now in a fair way to do well. Bridgie has been bedridden for the last eight or ten years, but oh, so gentle! When a child she slept, on a warm, sunny day, out in the hay-field, and was taken home a cripple.

"Good-evening, Mrs. Hanlon!"

"Oh, wisha, ye 're welcome, Father! But see what kind of a place we have before ye! We were out all day in the garden. Get out of that, Shep!" (to the woolly sheepdog).

"We just stepped across to see poor Bridgie, Mrs. Hanlon."

"God love ye! Oh, wisha, the poor crathure!" "How are you this evening, Bridgie?"

The poor invalid-a fair, gentle-faced girl of sixteen or

eighteen-extends a pale, thin hand; and, while in answer Nicely," her features wear the

to our query she says

sweetest of smiles.

"Have you pain now, Bridgie?"

"Oh, no,-not much!"

"Do you feel the day long?"

"When mother is within it is not long, but when mother is out it is sometimes very long."

"I have brought you a very interesting Irish tale, Bridgie, perhaps one of the best of our day: Marcella Grace,' by Miss Mulholland. Is Johnnie Daly coming, Mrs. Hanlon? I told him to bring something to Bridgie."

"Here he is, with a bird-cage in his hand."

"This pretty linnet is for you, Bridgie. The bird will be company to you when mother is out and the day seems long. And if his singing annoys you hold up your forefinger and say 'Now, Dickie!' and you will see he will bow his proud little head and become silent. In a day or two I will call to see how you and Dickie get on. Good-bye now, Bridgie!" And poor Bridgie follows us with another gentle smile, and the mother with a sincere and heartfelt blessing.

The night has fallen, and the lights are in the windowpanes as we return. Here we are, back at poor Mike Reidy's again. Listen! It is children's laughter. How merry it is! Oh, I know! The children of the place have come in to Mike's. What instinct children have! How well they know where they're welcome! We'll "stale in unknownst."

There is a merry fire on the hearth, the sanded floor has been newly swept, and the lamp is swinging on a pulley from the roof-tree. Six or eight children are playing pookeen. Oh, what fun! It is a children's blind-man'sbuff, but a hundred thousand times gladder and happier. A handkerchief is put over the eyes of one little thing, and she runs after the others. "Roast meat!" they cry, and she is warned that she is near the dresser or table or coob. She makes a dart in another direction, and they fly before and laugh. Is there on earth anything like the gladness of children's laughter? And their little bare feet are so nimble, and the tidy little carriage, and the loose locks, and the merry, healthful faces! Talk of the children of

the rich! They are nothing to the sweet children of the poor.

Sitting by the fire with Mrs. Reidy is "her next-door neighbor," Mrs. Doolan, having a shanachus (chat). There is a chattering and gosthering of the hens on the roost, as if talking to one another; and so well they might, if they had hearts at all for children's merry joys. But it is ominous, that gosthering—and oh, horror of horrors, the cock flaps his wings and crows!

Mrs. Doolan devoutly blesses herself. "She never likes to hear a cock crow in the evenin'. She never yet knew it to mane good." The poor children are bidden to be quiet and sit down, in tones that the little pets know well will brook no disobedience.

"I heard Mrs. Maloney, my own first cousin, Mrs. Reidy, say that she was this way sitting by the fire one night, and all at onst the cock began to crow, and the dog went out and sat on the ditch and cried as human as ever you heard. And, mind you, that night didn't her brother, ould Daniel Downey above on the hill-God rest the poor man's sowl! -die! An', be the same token, Mrs. Downey came to myself a week or so afterward, and 'Kittie,' says she, 'wisha, do you think would Daniel's ould clothes do to give for his sowl? Because, you see, there is a dale of them boys there (the sons), and it isn't aisy to get things for 'em all.' Don't chate the dead, whatever you do, Mary,' says I (and Mrs. Doolan gave her head a solemn shake). And wait till I tell you, Mrs. Reidy. Instead of taking my advice, what does she do but give ould rags of things that you wouldn't put frightenin' the crows! Yerrah, my dear, that very night didn't he come to her, and bate her black and blue, so that you wouldn't see an eye in her head in the mornin'-"

"Come on, Annie Donovan, and put in your finger!"— this from the infant group; for Annie was paying more heed to Mrs. Doolan and her story than to a new game they were playing now. They all put one finger on the knee of the biggest girl, and she sings:

"Miss Massy has a hen,

She lays guggies now and then:

Sometimes two and sometimes ten,—

And out with you, my little spotted hen!"

Each word of the rhyme was said on a finger, and the finger the last word fell on was ordered "out," and the owner of this finger went to the far end of the kitchen. Each of the group takes a fancy name, and the little one above gets a name also; then the leader calls out, "Six men here to cut the head and heels of you!" "Name 'em!" is answered from above. The names are called over. The little one above calls one of these-it may be her own; if so she has to come down; but if she chances to light on some one of the group, the child has to go and give her a jaunt to the fire.

Mrs. Doolan's story has an effect on Mrs. Reidy, and she wishes Mike was in the house. The cock crows again, and in spite of herself she feels as if something sad were going to happen.

Mrs. Doolan has gone home; the neighbors' children have left; the old man, the father-in-law, is in bed-Mrs. Reidy can hear him breathing heavily. She takes her two eldest ones—they always sleep with their grandfather— and lays them quietly to rest beside the old man without disturbing him. "Wisha, how unlucky he should have gone out after his supper!" she says to herself. The youngest baby is in the cradle, and Mrs. Reidy takes up a garment to mend.

Now, stranger, we have time to look around us. Everything is silent, except the tick of the round-dialled, twentyfour-hour clock of a quarter of a century ago, hanging on the wall. There was such a clock where I went to school. Our poor old master, a simple-minded, conscientious man, with a wonderful taste for mathematics, had to resort to the segments of a new potato in our day to teach us conic sections, and knelt on a new piece of boarding in the floor to draw parabolas and ellipses. God be good to him! At any rate, he tired of getting the old clock mended. Dan Mangan tried his hand at it, and Pat M'Coy-the Lord have mercy on him!—and all the handy men of the neighborhood. It might go on for a while, but it was sure to stop again. One day an old traveling man came in with a bunch of keys in his hand, and a lot of things in an old bag.

"Clock to mend, sir?"

Old George took a few of us aside, and asked us did we

think the man was honest. Our united opinion was in the affirmative. He settled with the man to do the clock. It was taken asunder, cleaned, set up, and put through all its facings. The man was paid and went his way. The clock moved round and soon the hands pointed to eleven. There was a lull in the school to hear the clock strike. Like a train coming into a station, it moved up evenly and grandly to eleven, but didn't stop there. Twelve! thirteen! Poor old George took off his low felt-hat-he always wore his hat because of a bad head,-and laid it on the desk. Every eye in the school was turned on the clock. On and on, it held the even tenor of its way. Twenty! thirty! forty! To make a long story short, it never drew bridle till it struck ninety-one. We were sent out to try if that old man might still be seen, but the clockmaker had disappeared.

The little cottage consists of the kitchen and two sleeping apartments on the ground-floor, and another room, or "loft," overhead. There are two small houses at the rear, for a pig, or a cow, or a donkey; and there is the half an acre of land attached, the entire being held from the local Board of Guardians. The houses cost about £80 for erection; the purchase of the land from landlord and tenant, together with engineers' and lawyers' fees, amounts to about half as much more; and the return at so much a week comes to about £2 10s. It thus appears that the rent of the little cottage and holding would never repay the principal; and at first sight it would look as if this were a misuse of the local rates, or that it has been done through charity. It is true, indeed, that this is a great boon to the laborer, because under the old system he was as a rule illhoused, wretchedly paid, and liable to ejectment every Lady-day. In that way he never stood independent with his labor in the market.

The local rates are not, however, badly expended in being laid out in this manner. First, it secures hands for the harvest and other busy seasons of the year; and in a broken harvest the farmers would very soon lose by the scarcity of help ten times the amount they now do by this trifling increase on the rates. In the second place, being in their own cottages, as they now are, they will be more self-supporting, and less likely to be a burden by sickness on the