ter their new home.

"O, woe, woe, woe!" cried they, as they found themselves admitted as
_paupers_, and enclosed within the precincts of the terrible poorhouse.
"O Lord, what will we do?" cried they. "O sir, don't keep us here, or
send word to the priest first. I will go to his house, myself," said
Paul.

"Shet up, ye little fools!" said the official; "this is a better place
nor ye think. Ye ain't going to get no potatoes, nohow, but something
better than ye ever were used to. Take these young 'uns to the stove in
the kitchen," said he to an under official. And the sobs and groans of
the destitute orphans were drowned in the uproarious rumbling of the
gong that called the officers of the establishment to dinner, it being
now noon.

The repugnance of the Irishman to the poorhouse is proverbial. Neither
prison, dungeon, nor death is invested with greater horror, in the minds
of the peasantry of Ireland, than this institution. Solely founded, as
they are told, for their special use and benefit, there are instances,
countless, on record, where the affectionate mother has thanked Heaven,
when by fever, plague, or hunger it deprived her of her darling infant,
rather than that it should become an inmate of the poorhouse!

"Is not this prejudice unreasonable and strange?" it will be asked. "And
why is it that the Irishman shuns and abhors an institution which his
English neighbor enjoys and petitions to enter?" The reasons are
numerous, and the difference in the feelings of both obvious and
palpable. It must be first remarked, that the Irish are a traditional
people, and remarkably conservative of the customs and usages of their
ancestors. They look back into the history of their country, or consult
their fathers and grandfathers, and in vain look back for the existence
of a poorhouse, or any necessity for its existence, before the advent of
the "godly reformation" and the established church in their midst. They
heard of such establishments as the ancient "_beataghs_," or houses of
hospitality, which were provided for the stranger and destitute in every
townland, the doors of which were open day and night, and on the boards
of which cooked victuals for scores of men were continually ready. These
were the substitute for the poorhouse in the days when England and all
Europe sent their poor scholars to receive a gratuitous education among
the inhabitants of the Island of Saints. There the poor and the hungry
could come in and