The woman who gave me the following statement seemed about twenty-two or twenty-three. She was large-boned, and of heavy figure and deportment. Her complexion and features were both coarse, but her voice had a softness, even in its broadest brogue, which is not very frequent among poor Irishwomen. The first sentence she uttered seems to me tersely to embody a deplorable history of the poverty of a day. It was between six and seven in the evening when I saw the poor creature:--
“Sure, thin, sir, it’s thrippince I’ve taken to-day, and tuppince is to pay for my night’s lodgin’. I shall do no more good to-night, and shall only stay in the cowld, if I stay in it, for nothing. I’m an orphand, sir,” (she three or four times alluded to this circumstance,) “and there’s nobody to care for me but God, glory be to his name! I came to London to join my brother, that had come over and did will, and he sint for me, but whin I got here I couldn’t find him in it anyhow. I don’t know how long that’s ago. It may be five years; it may be tin; but” (she added, with the true eloquence of beggary,) “sure, thin, sir, I had no harrut to keep count, if I knew how. My father and mother wasn’t able to keep me, nor to keep thimsilves in Ireland, and so I was sint over here. They was counthry payple. I don’t know about their landlorrud. They died not long afther I came here. I don’t know what they died of, but sure it was of the will of God, and they hadn’t much to make them love this worruld; no more have I. Would I like to go back to my own counthry? Will, thin, what would be the use? I sleep at a lodging-house, and it’s a dacint place. It’s mostly my own counthrywomen that’s in it; that is, in the women’s part. I pay 1_s._ a week, that’s 2_d._ a night, for I’m not charged for Sundays. I live on brid, and ’taties and salt, and a herrin’ sometimes. I niver taste beer, and not often tay, but I sit here all day, and I feel the hunger this day and that day. It goes off though, if I have nothin’ to ate. I don’t know why, but I won’t deny the goodness of God to bring such a thing about. I have lived for a day on a pinny, sir: a ha’pinny for brid, and a ha’pinny for a herrin’, or two herrin’s for a ha’pinny, and ’taties for the place of brid. I’ve changed apples for a herrin’ with a poor man, God rewarrud him. Sometimes I make on to 6_d._ a day, and sometimes I _have_ made 1_s._ 6_d._, but I think that I don’t make 5_d._ a day--arrah, no, thin, sir! one day with the other, and I don’t worruk on Sunday, not often. If I’ve no mate to ate, I’d rather rist. I never miss mass on a Sunday. A lady gives me a rag sometimes, but the bitther time’s comin’. If I was sick I don’t know what I’d do, but I would sind for the praste, and he’d counsil me. I could read a little oncte, but I can’t now.”