May equal happiness attend every such good wife and
mother! And may every man, who, like Maurice,
is tempted to be a gamester, reflect that a good character,
and domestic happiness, which cannot be won in any
lottery, are worth more than the five thousand, or
even the ten thousand pounds prize, let any Mrs. Dolly
in Christendom say what she will to the contrary.
Sept. 1799. ROSANNA.
There are two sorts of content: one is connected
with exertion, the other with habits of indolence;
the first is a virtue, the second a vice. Examples
of both may be found in abundance in Ireland.
There you may sometimes see a man in sound health
submitting day after day to evils which a few hours’
labour would remedy; and you are provoked to hear
him say, “It will do well enough for me.
Didn’t it do for my father before me? I
can make a shift with things for my time: any
how, I’m content.”
This kind of content is indeed the bane of industry.
But instances of a different sort may be found, in
various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them
we may behold men struggling with adversity with all
the strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting
irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fortitude
which must excite at once our pity and admiration.
In a pleasant village in the province of Leinster
there lives a family of the name of Gray. Whether
or not they are any way related to Old Robin Gray,
history does not determine; but it is very possible
that they are, because they came, it is said, originally
from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is
actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however,
in the obscurity which involves the early history of
the most ancient and illustrious families, we proceed
to less disputable and perhaps more useful facts.
It is well known, that is, by all his neighbours,
that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging
prospects: he was the youngest of a large family,
and the portion of his father’s property that
fell to his share was but just sufficient to maintain
his wife and three children. At his father’s
death, he had but 100_l_. in ready money, and he was
obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing
the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant
water; and before the window, of one pane, a dunghill
that, reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out
the light, and filled the house with the most noisome
smell. The ground sloped towards the house door;
so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the
kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor
was so damp and soft, that the print of the nails
of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set
down his foot. To be sure these nail-marks could
scarcely be seen, except just near the door or where
the light of the fire immediately shone; because,
elsewhere, the smoke was so thick, that the pig might
have been within a foot of you without your seeing
him. The former inhabitants of this mansion had,
it seems, been content without a chimney: and,
indeed, almost without a roof; the couples and purlins
of the roof having once given way, had never been
repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch,
so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary.
