The luck of O'Donoghue was
always with us. We had a good landlord, who asked a fair rent. We both
worked hard, we saved more money and took more land, and all our
neighbors thought that we were prosperous, and so we were.
"Then came '47. Nobody could be prosperous then. Nobody that had a
heart in him at all could even keep what he had saved then. What we
had and what our neighbors had belonged to all, and little enough
there was of it. It is well for you young people to talk of these
times being hard. Harder than some they may be, but good and easy
compared with those days of '47 and '48. You talk of injustice and
wrong to Ireland! What think you of those times, when every day great
ships sailed away from Ireland loaded down with food--corn and bacon,
and beef and butter--and Ireland's own people left without the bit of
food to keep the life in them? All summer long was the horrible wet
weather, and the potatoes rotting in the ground before they'ld be
ripe, and never fit to eat. To add to all that was the fever, that
killed its thousands, and then the cold.
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