United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"We are able to live barely able to live," she exclaimed; "an' thanks be to God we have our health; but the Daltons oh! they'll never get through what they're sufferin'; an' that girl oh! mother, sich a girl as that is how little does the world know of the heart that beautiful craythur has. May the mercy of God rest upon her!
Dalton says her own family isn't worse wid the sickness, but betther, she thinks; but she was cryin', the daicent craythur, and she says they'll die wid neglect and starvation, for she must be out, and there's no one to attend to them, and they have nothing but the black wather, God help them!"
Didn't its faythers dhrop off av the poor craythur, an' its skin toorn all spotty, jist loike our friend Misther Wake's phiz here; an' what could that be, sure, but the maysles, I'd loike to know?"
"I tould yez, sor, I wouldn't touch a dhrop ov the craythur, maynin' whisky, sure," he said, with a miserable attempt at a grin; for he felt very much humiliated at losing his stripes, Macan sober being quite a different man to Macan drunk. "An' faix I niver bruk me wurrud at all, at all, I'll swear, sor." "How can you have the face to deny it, man?" cried the doctor, angrily.
"Arrah, sure, sir, what would the woman that owns me do while I was away? and maybe it's break her heart the craythur would, thinking I was lost intirely; and who'd be at home to take care o' the childher' and airn thim the bit and the sup, whin I'd be away? and who knows but it's all dead they'd be afore I got back?
"Faix, then, maybe I did," said Andy, with a knowing nod. "And I hope Matty is well?" said Dick. "Ah, Misther Dick, you're always goin' on with your jokin', so you are. So, you heerd o' that job, did you? Faix, a purty lady she is oh, it's not her at all I am married to, but another woman." "Another woman!" exclaimed Dick, in surprise. "Yis, sir, another woman a kind craythur."
Amongst these few, I am sorry to say, Corporal Macan distinguished himself, falling a victim to his "ould complaint," by coming aboard on the second day after our arrival in a state of glorious intoxication, despite his solemn promise to Dr Nettleby, through whom the commander had given him permission to land, that he "wouldn't touch a dhrop ov the craythur, not if Ould Nick axed him."
He had a wife, and av coorse they had childhre, and small blame to them, and plenty of them, so that the poor little waiver was obleeged to work his fingers to the bone a'most to get them the bit and the sup; but he didn't begridge that, for he was an industherous craythur, as I said before, and it was up airly and down late with him, and the loom never standin' still.
How much of the whole composition was conscious humbug, and whether any of it was genuine feeling, I have as little idea now as I had then. The shallows of the human heart are at least as difficult to sound as its depths, and Micky Macartney's was quite beyond me. One thing about the letter was true enough. As he said, it would "plaze the ould craythur intirely."
Throth, I was a'most ashamed to put my fut on the deck, it was so clane, and she painted every color in the rainbow; and all sorts o' curiosities about her; and instead iv a tiller to steer her, like this darlin' craythur iv ours, she goes wid a wheel, like a coach all as one; and there's the quarest thing you iver seen, to show the way, as the captain gev me to understan', a little round rowly-powly thing in a bowl, that goes waddlin' about as if it didn't know its own way, much more nor show anybody theirs.
Word Of The Day