The Bamberg Herald

IRISH HOPEFULNESS.

Sure, Things Are Never So Bad but They Might Be Worse.

The Irishman sees everything through rose colored glasses, says a writer in the Guidon. He is supported, too, by a simple, sturdy faith, a spirit of resignation and unworldliness worthy of the saints of old.

The dread blight had fallen on the fields in most of the district where we were visiting in Ireland, and the potato vines hung limp and brown. No word of complaint was spoken, and when the likelihood of famine was mentioned the answer came:

"Danger, ma'am? Yes, there is. Indeed, but God is good. He'll find a way."

So, too, about the hay. The summer had been terribly wet, and for days the new mown hay had laid on the ground. It was an anxious time.

"What will you do," I said to Mike, "If this weather keeps up? Your hay will surely be ruined."

"Oh, please God, it won't keep up," he answered. "He'll send us a bright day soon, just to see how well we'll use it."

"What a glorious night, Mikey," I said to the boy, as he and I and the donkey drove home under the August moon.

"A fine night, indeed, ma'am. Thanks be to God for giving it to us!"

They showed us, on the road to town, a gentleman's place where, in a stretch of what not long since had evidently been thickly wooded land stood stump after stump of giant trees. Four or five years ago, when the winter was exceptionally long and cold, the peasants suffered from scarcity of peat. They begged this landed proprietor to sell them wood; offering not only to pay his price but to fell the trees and carry them off. He refused.

Again and again they begged, for the suffering grew intense, but he would not let his hand be marred. One night there came a wind so frightful that it seemed for a time as if the "big wind" were blowing again. In the morning the highway along this proprietor's domain was impassable. Huge trees, blown to the ground, lay across the road for a distance of two miles, and the forest beauty was a thing of the past. The town authorities ordered the obstruction cleared away, and the peasants got for nothing more than they had been refused for pay.

" 'Twas the hand of God was in that, ma'am," I was told, "for, with all the wind, not a poor man's cot was harmed, nor another tree on the countryside only those. God always looks after His poor."