“It’s hard to say,” she observed to her husband, “how soon they may be useful to us.  Who knows, Pether, but we may have a full shop yit, an’ they may be able to make up bits of accounts for us, poor things?  Throth, I’d be happy if I wanst seen it.”

“Faix, Ellish,” replied Peter, “if we can get an as we’re doin’, it is hard to say.  For my own part, if I had got the larnin’ in time, I might be a bright boy to-day, no doubt of it—­could spake up to the best o’ thim.  I never wint to school but wanst, an’ I remimber I threw the masther into a kiln-pot, an’ broke the poor craythur’s arm; an’ from that day to this, I never could be brought a single day to school.”

Peter and Ellish now began to be pointed out as a couple worthy of imitation by those who knew that perseverance and industry never fail of securing their own reward.  Others, however,—­that is to say, the lazy, the profligate, and the ignorant,—­had a ready solution of the secret of their success.

“Oh, my dear, she’s a lucky woman, an’ anything she puts her hand to prospers.  Sure sho was born wid a lucky caul* an her head; an’, be sure, ahagur, the world will flow in upon thim.  There’s many a neighbor about thim works their fingers to the stumps, an’ yit you see they can’t get an:  for Ellish, if she’d throw the sweepins of her hearth to the wind, it ‘ud come back to her in money.  She was born to it, an’ nothin’ can keep her from her luck!"**

* The caul is a, thin membrane, about the consistence of very fine silk, which sometimes covers the head on a new-born infant like a cap.  It is always the omen of great good fortune to the infant and parents; and in Ireland, when any one has unexpectedly fallen into the receipt of property, or any other temporal good, it is customary to say, “such a person was born with a ’lucky caul’ on his head.”

Why these are considered lucky, it would be a very difficult matter to ascertain.  Several instances of good fortune, happening to such as were born with them, might, by their coincidences, form a basis for the superstition; just as the fact of three men during one severe winter having been found drowned, each with two shirts on, generated an opinion which has now become fixed and general in that parish, that it is unlucky to wear two shirts at once.  We are not certain whether the caul is in general the perquisite of the midwife—­ sometimes we believe it is; at all events, her integrity occasionally yields to the desire of possessing it.  In many cases she conceals its existence, in order that she may secretly dispose of it to good advantage, which she frequently does; for it is considered to be the herald of good fortune to those who can get it into their possession.  Now, let not our English neighbors smile at us for those things until they wash their own hands clear of such practices.  At this day a caul will bring a good price in the most civilized city in the world—­to wit, the good city of London—­the British metropolis.  Nay to such lengths has the mania for cauls been carried there, that they have been actually advertised for in the Times newspaper.

     * This doctrine of fatalism is very prevalent among the
     lower orders in Ireland.